


Mad Religion

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Series: Monica is Alive AU [9]
Category: Baccano!
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Torture, Cults, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-06-26 01:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15653010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: In October of 2001, Huey and Monica stumble across a modern version of the cult that once tortured and worshiped Elmer. Separately, Elmer stumbles across a branch of the cult on his own--and rather than the vengeance Huey and Monica seek, he only devotes himself to making their sacrificial god smile. This puts him at cross-purposes to his friends' rage. But as long as he can make that little girl happy, that's all that matters.Right?Isn't that what he's for?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Goodness gracious, this fic has been a _long_ time coming. I first conceived of it back in 2015, and devoted July of 2017 to writing a first draft, but then _Transistor_ was eating my brain and I didn't have the focus to edit it. In the past half-month or so I have edited it, and now I feel like it's finally ready to be seen by the world. 
> 
> The fic is complete and totals about 50,000 words. There's a prologue, eight chapters, and an epilogue. Chapters will be posted at the pace of "as I perform final tune-ups on each chapter."

Once the girl sitting next to him in the Greyhound station falls asleep, Elmer pulls out his cell phone. He taps a familiar phone number into it.

But he doesn’t press “call” just yet.

He stares down at the number—smiles down at it. Of course. But there’s something caught in his chest, and it’s going to come out if he presses the call button, and he doesn’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. He runs his thumb over the button again and again. The screen goes blank, and he wakes it up again to stare at the number some more. Finally his thumb comes down on the button, and he lifts the phone to his ear.

It rings twice before it picks up, and Monica’s voice asks, “Elmer?”

Good old caller ID. “Hey, Moni-Moni,” he says, the words easy enough. “Is Huey around? I have a question for both of you. It’s quick, I promise.”

“Sure, just a second.” Her voice is strange. He hears her call for Huey and then turn the headset to speakerphone. “We’re here, Elmer. What’s up?”

He’s figured out what’s wrong with her voice. It’s strained—weird-cheerful. A fake smile kind of voice. But he doesn’t think of cheering her up, right now; instead he thinks of bared teeth and crinkled eyes and sobs of terror that had tried so hard to be laughter. For a second, he’s forgetting to breathe.

“Elmer?”

That’s Huey’s voice, intense and concerned. Definitely not smiling now, and Elmer can’t even begin to think how to change that, can’t imagine a reassurance or a stupid joke or anything but the question he called to ask, which comes out in a voice that doesn’t sound like his at all—

“Um… Can I come home?”


	2. Chapter 1

**A month earlier**

Huey and Monica sit next to each other at their kitchen table, their laptops and a binder of documents spread out in front of them. The air is brittle with tension; Monica is so focused that she only looks at Huey when he speaks or when she does, and the family cat, Zosimos, has been giving them a wide berth all day. Elmer is elsewhere. He’s been off on one of his smile journeys for almost a month now, which is not unusual; he hasn’t contacted them in that time, which is. They are almost glad he isn’t here to see _this_ , except for the persistent, unspoken fear that _this_ has something—anything—to do with why he hasn’t been in touch.

Huey flips to the next page in the binder. A surprising number of pages seem to be copies of faxes or printed email exchanges. Conversant names are redacted, but not always well. Huey snaps the binder rings open to lift the page and examine it more closely.

“University of Colorado,” he says bluntly, deciphering the shine of toner against the black of Sharpie marker. “And… Johns Hopkins?”

It’s not a lot to go on. Monica writes it down in the notebook in front of her rather than typing it into her browser for now. “There were some pages in other languages,” she reminds him.

“Yes.” Huey hasn’t made any effort to find those pages specifically. He doesn’t want to learn that this is an international matter instead of a national one, instead of the _local_ one they had so foolishly assumed. He feels as though he’s accidentally kicked a stone aside only to discover a swarm of maggots writhing beneath it, and it’s a struggle not to let disgust paralyze him.

But Monica flips ahead in the binder, her eyes focused. “Portugal,” she notes aloud. She flips forward a little further. “And Japan.”

Huey sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes shut. “So, it’s international.”

“Mmhmm,” Monica agrees. Then, before Huey can open his eyes again, she lays a gentle hand on his arm. “Huey? Should we take a break?”

“No.” A break isn’t going to make any of this less horrifying. He opens his eyes and looks back down at the binder, careful to pay attention to addresses and locations rather than the content of the text. “We need to keep working.”

He feels Monica’s eyes linger on him a little longer; then she exhales quietly and turns back to the papers in front of them. They work in silence for a few minutes, not even bothering to look up when the phone begins to ring. But after the answering machine plays its prerecorded message, a familiar voice emerges from the phone.

“Huey? Monica? …I’ll call Huey’s cell.”

Their heads shoot up in sync as a beep indicates that Elmer has hung up. By the time Huey turns his head to look at Monica, she’s already watching him, her face a mirror of his uncertainty.

“Why now?” Huey wonders aloud. “Why _today_?”

Monica shakes her head, as wary as he is. Huey’s cell phone begins to ring, and she glances down at it. Huey does the same, unease filling his chest. It’s not like Elmer to immediately try his cell after winding up on the answering machine; usually he would leave a cheerful, rambling message not-so-secretly designed to leave them smirking. But usually he wouldn’t go a month without calling in the first place.

“Huey—” Monica says as the phone rings.

“I know.” They have to answer. But before Huey presses the button, he looks at Monica once more. “We’re not telling him.”

She nods, silently. She knows as well as he does what could happen if Elmer learns what they’ve stumbled into.

Huey answers the phone at last, turning it to speakerphone. There’s no point in feigning cheerfulness to Elmer, so he takes refuge in blunt accusation: “Elmer, it’s been a month.”

“Ha! Sorry, Huey,” comes Elmer’s voice. “Hey, is Monica there?”

“Yes, you’re on speaker.”

“Hi, Elmer,” Monica chimes in. She, too, elects to color her voice with aggravation instead of trying to deceive Elmer.

“Hi, Moni-Moni!”

He _sounds_ normal at least, cheerful and impervious to their irritation. But considering his propensity to keep smiling even in the worst of situations, Huey doesn’t relax just yet.

“Where have you been?” he asks. “You’re not usually gone this long.”

“Sorry, I’m working on a tough case—a whole month and she hasn’t smiled once. I don’t think I can come home for a little while yet.”

Monica and Huey exchange a glance, both aware that Elmer is dodging the question. Monica opens her mouth to ask again, but Elmer is faster.

“That aside, how are you two? You sound like you’re in a bad mood, is everything okay?”

“We’re angry because it’s been a month since you left and you haven’t called us,” Monica says testily. It’s more direct than Huey would have been, but still not entirely honest; under different circumstances, they would have been relieved to hear from Elmer. Not on edge like this.

“I’m really sorry,” Elmer says. There’s a note of sincerity to it, but he’s hardly scrambling to explain himself. “The circumstances are a little weird. I’ll tell you about it once I get home.”

Huey’s stomach clenches. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, everything’s fine,” Elmer reassures him quickly. “Everything’s fine, just weird. It’s fine.”

“Really?” Monica presses.

“Yup! Nothing to worry about, I promise.”

Huey meets Monica’s eyes. _He’s lying_ , he mouths, and she nods, her gaze intense.

“Elmer—” she starts to say, but he interrupts again.

“Enough about me! What have you guys been up to, anyway? How’s the kitty cat? It’s been so long—”

“Elmer, why are you being so _obtuse_?” Huey demands, his patience at its limit. Elmer is always annoying, but not like _this_. He doesn’t usually dodge and deflect every question. No one would call him an honest person, but at least he’s usually honest with _them_.

There is a moment’s pause, and then Elmer gives an awkward chuckle. “I guess I’m not being very subtle, huh?”

“You’ve never been subtle in your life,” Huey answers flatly.

“Nope! It’s not my specialty. I guess I might as well just come out and ask.” He takes a deep breath. “Can you two do me a favor and answer honestly?”

“Like you _haven’t_ been doing, you mean?” Monica points out.

“Well, if I’m right about this, I promise I’ll stop being so squirrelly. Deal?”

Huey and Monica glance at each other, and then Huey looks significantly at the papers scattered across the table. No matter what Elmer asks, they can’t let him get involved in this.

Monica pulls a scrap of paper to herself. _If he guesses_ , she writes, _we have bigger problems_.

Huey grits his teeth, unwilling to consider that possibility.

“Guys?” Elmer asks. “You still there?”

“Yes, we’re here,” Monica answers. “What’s your question?”

“Right. So.” Elmer takes a deep breath. “Did you guys kidnap a bunch of kids from a child-torturing cult yesterday?” His voice is somehow light and serious at the same time: devoid of accusation, but confident in the scenario he proposes. He gives them just long enough to exchange a look of dread before adding the clincher: “I mean, I heard they were wearing our masks when they got dropped off at the police station, so I’m pretty sure it was you two. Right?”

Huey and Monica have both gone pale. Monica finds her voice first. “How did you know about that?” she demands, her tone low and unfriendly.

“Heh… is that the Mask Maker coming out?” Elmer’s voice sounds wry. “Sorry, I’m not trying to scare you! So it was you, then?”

“Obviously,” Huey snaps. “Answer Monica’s question.”

They’ve kept an eye on the papers; no one’s reporting the incident, and given what they’ve learned in the past twenty-four hours about the cult’s scope, that’s not surprising. So unless Elmer just happens to be spending time with local law enforcement—

Elmer sighs. “So, that’s why I was being cagey before… Don’t freak out, okay?”

Huey’s heart pounds. “No,” he says, trying to forestall what he knows is going to come out of Elmer’s mouth next.

But Elmer continues, speaking gingerly. “I’m fine,” he promises, “but I’ve been staying with another branch of that cult for the past month.”

“ _No_ ,” Huey says again, louder this time. The blood is rushing in his ears now, and the plastic casing of his phone creaks in his too-tight grip. “Elmer, if they’ve so much as _touched you_ —”

His head spins and he can’t finish the thought. Monica takes his hand—takes his phone from his hand—and she watches him stare down at the phone as Elmer continues to speak, his voice rapid.

“They’re not hurting me. I promise. I’m just staying with them.”

“Elmer—” Huey’s voice comes out strained.

“I’m not lying. I’m not letting them hurt me because I know it would upset you two. I wouldn’t risk your smiles like that. You can believe that, right? So it’s okay. I’m fine.”

It isn’t okay. Huey’s throat is swollen and painful, and it falls to Monica to respond.

“Come home,” she says, her voice forceful but free of the Mask Maker’s coldness. “You don’t have to stay there. You shouldn’t be there.”

“No, I want to be here,” Elmer says. “They’re their own branch and they’ve just got one sacrifice, and I really want to see if I can help her smile.”

“Elmer, that…” Huey starts, and then stops. He wants to say that that doesn’t _matter_ —that it doesn’t matter as much as Elmer being safe—but to Elmer, it does. Elmer will do anything for a smile. Elmer will _subject himself_ to anything for a smile. And if the object of his attentions is hard to convince, his determination only grows. Huey scrabbles for a better objection. “What happens if you can’t do it?”

Monica winces, and Huey realizes belatedly why the question makes his own heart pound. What if Elmer _can’t_ make someone like himself smile? What does that mean about Elmer?

But if Elmer notices the unintended implication, he doesn’t speak of it. His voice is lighter than it should be when he answers. “Well, she’s almost ten anyway,” he explains. “So I guess I’ll be home in a month or so at the latest.”

Without context, it would be easy to miss the horror in what he’s saying. Huey doesn’t miss it—it makes his head spin with vertiginous dread—and he doesn’t want Elmer to be there when the cult suddenly finds themselves short one sacrifice. “Come home,” he insists.

“No. Sorry, Huey,” Elmer answers, and Huey can picture his rueful smile as he digs in his heels. There is an awkward silence. Finally Elmer speaks again. “So, I actually called to make a request of you two.”

“What is it?” Huey asks at once. If there’s something they can do to end Elmer’s association with the cult faster—

“Can you guys back off?”

“…What?”

It’s Monica who manages to speak first. Her eyes are narrowed; her face is otherwise studiously blank.

“This cult is big,” Elmer says. “Way bigger than my parents and their friends, I think. And their reach is definitely wider. I mean, the branch I’m staying with is just a few people, but they’re connected to the larger group, and I think there are branches all over the world—”

“There are,” Monica says tersely.

“Right, and they’re all talking to each other, and guys—they’re dangerous. They hurt people who come after them. I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“We’re immortal,” Huey cuts in.

“That just means they can hurt you over and over. And they already know about Immortals somehow. They weren’t surprised about me at all. I don’t want them to track you two down and decide that you would make perfect gods for them to hurt forever.”

“Then why are _you_ with them?” Huey demands. “It’s just as dangerous for you—”

“Because I want to make their sacrifice smile,” Elmer repeats himself patiently. “Don’t worry about me, okay? They’re being kind of… respectful to me, honestly. I guess because I used to be one of their gods?”

“They’re keeping their hands off you because you’re one of their gods? That’s not how they _work_ , Elmer!”

“I _know_!” Elmer’s answer comes almost before Huey finishes speaking. He laughs, but it doesn’t sound like his laughter. More like an escaped breath. “I know it’s weird. Maybe it’s ’cause I survived the ritual that was supposed to kill me, so I’m not what I was to them as a kid anymore, or _something_ , I don’t know. But they aren’t trying to hurt me. Look, if they do, I’ll leave, okay? If I promise that, would you guys smile? Please?”

Huey grits his teeth, trying not to hear the desperation in Elmer’s voice. “Elmer, _which part of this_ is supposed to make me smile?”

“The part where they’re not hurting me?” Elmer suggests, but his hesitant tone makes it clear that he knows it’s a weak argument. His cheerfulness is faltering, and rage twists Huey’s stomach.

“I’m going to destroy them,” he swears.

“ _Don’t_ , Huey, please… Moni-Moni, help me out.”

Her mouth tightens in a grim line. “I’m with Huey on this, Elmer.”

Elmer gives a frustrated sigh. “Guys…”

“Elmer, they’re _torturing children_ ,” Huey snarls. “Who the hell would back off, knowing that?”

“But you guys only care ’cause they tortured me first!”

Huey’s throat closes. He can’t respond. It would be easier if Elmer were angry—but there is only urgency in his voice. He’s saying it because he already knows it’s true, and his words rake at the inside of Huey’s chest.

Monica stays calmer— _too_ calm, as calm as ice. She lifts her chin and stares down at the phone. “So what?” she asks Elmer in a low voice. “Are we unforgivably selfish if that’s the reason we want to take down a worldwide child-torturing cult? _Smile Junkie_?”

“No, that’s—” Elmer exhales against the phone. “That’s not what I’m _saying_. I don’t think anything’s unforgivable, you know that. And I don’t care if you’re being selfish. It’s just, if you’re doing this because of me, can’t you listen to what I’m saying?” He’s rambling a little. “Trying to take down SAMPLE is dangerous. They already know someone’s after them, and if they find out it’s you, they’ll hunt you down, and I don’t want that. I want you guys to stay safe.”

Huey finds his voice again. “We’ll be safe if _we_ hunt _them_ down first,” he says. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”

“I don’t want this,” Elmer pleads. “Huey—Monica—it’s dangerous. I don’t want them to take away your smiles.”

“They won’t,” Monica says with the Mask Maker’s confidence and finality. “We’re going to get to them first.”

There is a long, long silence. The air feels too thick to breathe and Huey’s blood is pounding in his ears.

Elmer breaks the silence with a light sigh.

“All right, well,” he says, and his voice is tinged with its usual cheer but it sounds far, far away. “You two do what makes you happy, okay? That’s what matters.”

And before either of them can answer, the phone trills once and the screen returns to the default time display. Huey stares down at it, stunned.

“He hung up,” he says, unnecessarily.

He raises his head to look at Monica. Now that Elmer is gone—now that he has hung up—her coldness has vanished and Huey sees his own bewilderment reflected in her eyes.

“Did we just… fight with Elmer?” she asks, her voice wavering a little.

Huey’s stomach twists. “Elmer doesn’t _fight_ ,” he protests. In three hundred years, Huey’s never known him to fight. He is persistent only in making others smile, and he readily abandons any other subject with a carefree shrug. He _doesn’t fight_.

But just now—

The stone in the pit of Huey’s stomach accepts what everything else in him tries to deny. For once, Elmer has cared enough about something to take a real stand. Against them. And it had to be _this_.

Monica has put his phone back down. He picks it up again—not to call Elmer back (the thought makes his heart wrench painfully) but just so that he’s holding onto something. He rolls the phone over and over in his hand while Monica waits for him to speak. He tries to quiet his racing heart.

“There was something strange in Elmer’s voice from the start,” he says at last. “Even before we started disagreeing. I don’t know _why_ he thinks he has to be with them—”

“Yes, you do,” Monica interrupts him quietly, eyes averted and lips briefly pulled into a wry expression that wouldn’t have satisfied their absent partner.

Huey exhales and stops fidgeting with his phone for a moment, instead staring down at it. “Yes,” he says, “I do. But I refuse to agree with it. We’ll tear the whole cult down and then whoever he’s working on—he said she’s only got a month left anyway and that’s _nothing_ , he’ll never be able to help her before then. You’ve seen what _he’s_ like.”

It’s a cruel thing to say about Elmer, and he wonders if Monica will reproach him for it—but she only listens, her eyes solemn. Huey continues, keeping his speech methodical so that he does not start ranting.

“It’s in everyone’s best interest to destroy the cult: the girl he’s working on, and all the other sacrifices around the world. And Elmer himself.”

“Even if that’s not what Elmer wants from us?”

Monica asks the obvious question with a pained smile on her face. Huey gives his head a little shake.

“Yes,” he answers at once, firmly. “I’m not doing this because of anyone it will benefit. I want to destroy them for my own sake.”

He knows it’s selfish not to care what Elmer wants and he embraces it anyway. He thinks of what the cult once did to Elmer and _he_ wants them destroyed. He wants every last one of them burned to ashes. It’s not rational. He doesn’t care. He’ll destroy what would reach out and hurt Elmer, and then _whatever_ made Elmer’s voice sound so strange will be gone.

He glances at Monica, wondering again if she will reproach his selfishness. But the pained smile has left her face, as has the numb surprise she wore when Elmer hung up. Now she is calm and determined as she stares back at him.

“Then I’ll help, too,” she says, sounding certain in a way he cannot hope to imitate right now.

She places her hand over his—pries his phone out of his grasp once more. This time, she does it so that she can take his hand between both of hers. Huey feels her pulse beat against his skin, steady and unflinching. For just a moment, he lets himself lean against her. Then he pulls his hand free and reaches without a word for the next page of the binder.

*

Elmer doesn’t go straight back to the Martins’ house once he hangs up on Huey and Monica. He hops off the edge of the merry-go-round in the empty playground, pulling his jacket a little tighter against the cold, and decides to stop by the corner store for some candy.

They’ll be okay, he tells himself. They’re capable, and they’re sneaky, and he’s seen cruel triumph on their faces before and that isn’t a bad look for them, not really. So as long as they can stay ahead of SAMPLE, this will all work out.

If they can’t—

Elmer’s grin falters as he stands in the candy aisle. He pulls it back into place. He’ll try to stay on top of what SAMPLE knows, and if there’s going to be danger, he’ll head it off. Somehow. It’s the least he can do for his family.

He buys a couple bags of M&M’s and thinks, purposefully, _I wonder if these will help her_. It’s a safer thought than the others, and he lets himself focus on that as he heads back to the suburban Baltimore home where he’s been staying.

It was an accident that he found them at all. On the day he’d last left home, he happened to see a funeral; as he was passing by, he happened to see a woman in the back with a peaceful smile on her face. It was genuine. Genuine, but still strange in some way. He struck up a conversation after the funeral was over, and she was more than willing to share the reason behind her smile: her husband was a leader in a religious order that sought utter peace of mind for its adherents.

“I want to know more about that!” Elmer had exclaimed, because of course he had. Of course he wanted to know more. Every religion has its perks for those who follow it, but so often they trade on guilt and control; if there’s a religion that truly prioritizes its followers’ happiness, of course it’s in Elmer’s nature to investigate that.

And she had welcomed his curiosity, and invited him to come stay with her family.

He tries to remember, now, whether he suspected from the beginning. He thinks he must have. Because it wasn’t _really_ a surprise when her husband had greeted Elmer in rote phrases that he hadn’t heard in centuries. Surprise wasn’t what he felt as he found himself mumbling the correct response. He’d felt—something, but not surprise.

The feeling is still with him now, and he’s been trying to figure out what it _is_ , and that’s the other reason he agreed to stay in their spare bedroom for as long as they’ll have him.

They’ve been hospitable, generous. They’re not charging him for room or food or anything. They even made a copy of their key for him, so he doesn’t have to ring the doorbell to be let in; he just opens the door himself and steps inside.

“Holy one,” he hears. “You’re back.”

He turns towards the voice—smiling, because that’s what his face does. “Yep. Just went out for a bit of a walk.”

The man who spoke is wearing a white lab coat stamped with the logo of a local hospital over a button-up shirt of mottled red and black. His hair is a pale blond and beginning to thin at the crown. The smile on his face is peaceful, almost beatific, and always, always genuine.

Elmer fishes the bag of M&M’s out of his pocket. “Hey, has your daughter ever had these before, Dr. Martin? I bought some to share with her.”

“I don’t believe she has, your wretched holiness,” Martin answers with a tilt of his head. “But if you’re hoping they will lift her spirits, you will be disappointed. Her tongue was healing, so we had her drink boiling water again during the morning prayers.”

“Ah.” Elmer’s smile shifts to a wry one, and he chides, “You know, you could do some permanent damage like that. Not just to her tongue. Her esophagus, too. And maybe the lining of her stomach? It’s not good for her.”

Martin laughs—a rich, collegiate sound as though Elmer has shared a friendly joke over drinks. “Holy one, there is no _permanence_ for her. She will be dead by the new year.”

“Maybe.”

There’s a hint of defiance to the word, half-intentional. Smiling defiance, spoken casually with a shrug, but defiance all the same.

It isn’t a surprise to Martin. He knows what Elmer intends; Elmer has made no secret of it.

“Do you still think you have a chance of tempting her to leave with you?”

Elmer shrugs. “I’m gonna keep trying, at least!”

“It will never work.” Martin casts his eyes upwards reverently—not towards heaven, but towards his daughter’s bedroom on the second floor. “She knows that there is no way for her to be free of her suffering. There is nothing _human_ left in that girl, holy one; she is an avatar of our god, and nothing more. You cannot teach her hope, because there’s nothing within her capable of learning it.”

“But you said you were raising her normally once.”

Martin shakes his head. “That girl is dead,” he says, his eyes peaceful. “She died the day our former god chose her for this blessed, cursed fate. Since then, she has known nothing but agony. I can guarantee that she has no memories of a time in which she was happy. You must know that—in a month’s time, have you managed even once to make her smile?”

“Not yet,” Elmer confesses. “But I’m still hopeful.”

“You should know better, holy one.”

“No, but that’s the thing!” Elmer’s smile stops being wry and starts being bright again. “ _I’m_ hopeful. I figured out hope! So maybe Ell—”

Martin interrupts him with a raised hand. “Do not speak that name,” he admonishes Elmer. “She is not that child anymore. She is something much purer than that: a vessel for our god.”

Arguing back here won’t achieve anything. Elmer knows that. He returns to his point. “I’m just saying, maybe she can figure hope out, too. I mean, it took me at least a hundred years, but groundless optimism is even easier than hope. I think I figured optimism out in about seven years. So there’s a chance. I’m not giving up yet.”

Martin lays a gentle hand on Elmer’s shoulder. Elmer holds his breath, waiting for what he will say.

It’s nothing surprising, though.

“You’ve had three centuries, your wretched holiness. She has a month.” Martin chuckles, genuinely amused. “But by all means, bring her the M&M’s. Show her your kindness. The contrast between how you treat her and how we treat her will only make her suffering that much sweeter in the end.”

“I dunno about that,” Elmer says, his smile determined.

Martin’s answering smile is gentle and patronizing and worshipful. “That is nothing but your groundless optimism, holy one. I confess, all that is faithful within me is eager to see the pain you will feel when it is shattered.”

“That’s not what I’m for anymore,” Elmer reminds him.

“Not for now,” Martin agrees. He turns away. “There will be more prayers tonight. Will you tell our god, so that she may writhe in fearful anticipation until then?”

He doesn’t wait to hear Elmer’s answer. Instead he heads into his study and shuts the door. Elmer stares at the closed door for a moment until the tight feeling in his chest recedes; then he climbs the stairs to see what he can do for the little girl.

 

He knocks on the bedroom door with three loud, deliberate raps before entering. The room’s occupant probably hasn’t heard him—the enormous headphones they put on her block out sound—but maybe she’ll take it in subconsciously.

Regardless, he enters without waiting for a response. The girl is hunched over on the sawdust mattress, still blindfolded, sweat pasting her thin blonde hair to her forehead; as he’d suspected, she doesn’t seem aware that he’s come in. He approaches her carefully and slips the headphones off her ears before doing anything else.

“It’s me, Ellis,” he assures her, but not before she flinches at the contact. “Nothing to be afraid of right now.”

She calms, and Elmer removes the blindfold as well. Her eyes, still red with tears, focus on his form slowly. The last of her tension fades, but she doesn’t smile.

Elmer smiles bright enough for both of them together. “Is it okay if I stay here and hang out for a little bit, or would you like me to go?”

“You can stay,” she answers in a whisper.

“Okay, I’ll stay! Are you in pain still? Any open wounds?”

She shakes her head.

“Good.”

He smiles again; she still doesn’t. She never has. That’s okay, though. He can work with what he’s got.

He sits next to her on the uncomfortable bed and pulls the M&M’s out of his pocket. He tears the package open.

“Hey, your dad says your tongue’s not in great shape right now,” he says, “but I thought you might like to try these anyway. They’re called M&M’s. They’re a famous kind of chocolate candy.” He pops one into his mouth to prove that they’re not poisoned. Ellis watches him quietly, curiously. Tipping a few more candies into his hand, he offers them to her. “A lot of people really love chocolate. It’s a food that makes almost everyone smile. Pretty cool, huh? Give it a try?”

Obediently, she picks a blue one out of his palm and lifts it to her mouth. Elmer watches her jaw close on the candy, watches her narrow her eyes as she considers the flavor. She winces when she swallows—the burns inside her mouth must be bad—and she doesn’t smile. But Elmer doesn’t give up.

“Want another? You can have as many as you want.” He cups her hand in his and tips the candies into her palm. Smiles—tries to model the expression for her. Tries to demonstrate _happiness_ , although given the circumstances, he thinks he probably isn’t too happy right now. If he can get Ellis to smile, even just once—maybe then.

But it’s not like she’s never seen happiness before, either. Her family is happy, constantly; they take some kind of drug to guarantee that. So they smile as they torture her. They praise her and bless her. They wait until she stops screaming, and they thank her for the pain she bears in their stead, and then they hurt her some more.

It makes sense to Elmer, in a way. A deep, instinctive way. There’s something inevitable about it all. Whenever they come for her, it occurs to him that Huey and Monica would never let them drag her away; he can imagine Monica fighting back, stiletto in hand and cold scorn in her eyes. The only problem is, he can’t imagine it _working_. It takes more than that to stop them.

Is that why he can’t bring himself to try?

Ellis continues to pick at her M&M’s, but it’s clear that swallowing is painful for her right now. Elmer folds the half-empty bag closed and pulls the other one out of his pocket.

“You can save these for later, if you want. If you get hungry at some point,” he says. _If they take a break from feeding you_ , he doesn’t say. He doesn’t really need to.

Ellis accepts the candies. Her eyes rove around the room, looking for a hiding place.

“Under the mattress?” Elmer suggests. Ellis nods, and they both stand so that Elmer can lift the lumpy sack of sawdust up. Ellis tucks the packages into the bedframe and Elmer lowers the mattress so that she can sit back down. He stays standing, though.

“Have you thought about what I offered a little more?” he asks.

“…Yes.”

“Have you made a decision?”

A shake of her head with her eyes lowered.

“That’s fine. You still have a little time. Do you have any more questions for me?”

Ellis hugs her knees up to her chest, flexing her toes over the edge of the bed. It’s almost a minute before she speaks, and her voice is quiet and uncertain. “They used to do this to you, too.”

“Yep.”

“But they didn’t kill you?”

“Ahh, that’s a good question!” he says, but she doesn’t understand being praised for something like that. “Actually, they were going to. They were just about to, but some other people came and killed everyone but me instead.”

“From another branch?”

Elmer shakes his head. “No, people who believed different things. People who don’t think it’s okay to hurt kids. They were angry that my parents and everyone were hurting me, so they killed all of them.”

He realizes only after he’s finished speaking that there were too many “they”s in his explanation. Judging by the way Ellis’s brow furrows, she hasn’t really followed his story. But that doesn’t surprise him. When the crusaders came for him, he didn’t—couldn’t—understand that there might be somewhere in the world where he didn’t have to be hurt. It took him years to trust in that. He wants to help Ellis realize the same thing, but the concept is so foreign to her.

“So… you would have died,” she says, slowly integrating Elmer’s experience into the narrative she does understand.

“Yep. I should have died that day. Other people rescued me.”

Ellis lifts her eyes cautiously, a glimmer of—something—in them for just a moment; then the light goes out and she looks down again. “No one will come for me,” she says simply. Inevitably.

Elmer is silent for a moment, thinking of Monica and Huey. What they’re trying to do. Martin talked at the morning service about the attack on the other branch and the liberation of their sacrificial gods, but Ellis must not have heard, or understood. If she had, would she be able to understand it as a possibility for herself? Would she be able to hope in such a possibility?

Can he be sure that that’s what hope would look like for her?

For a moment, he turns his gaze away from her. He sighs, even if his smile never wavers.

“When the church came and killed all my family,” he says, “I didn’t know what to think of them. I thought I was supposed to die, so I didn’t know what to do when I suddenly didn’t have to. And I was really close to death, anyway. I got really sick and weak for a really long time. And by the time I recovered, I was living a new life.”

Ellis kicks her legs idly, her skinny, scarred ankles swinging through the air. “Did they hurt you there?”

“No,” Elmer says. “They always tried really hard not to, actually. But… I can’t say it was perfect, either. It’s really different, you know? In a place like this, everyone’s smiling. They’re all happy. And it’s because of you, kinda? I don’t think they should find their happiness by taking yours away, but… in a way, it’s still something _you’re_ doing. At least that’s how I thought of it. But out there, there are some people you can’t help no matter how hard you try. And that was hard for me to get used to. I bet my friends would say I still haven’t really accepted it, haha!”

Ellis watches him, brow slightly furrowed as she tries to understand what he’s saying.

“Do you want to help people? I should’ve asked that first, I guess,” Elmer muses. “That’s what I like to do, but what about you?”

“Um…” Ellis looks down at her feet. “I… I don’t…”

“Don’t know?”

She nods.

“That’s okay, too,” Elmer reassures her. “You don’t have to know what you want. It’s weird, right? ’Cause they don’t care what you want. So it’s hard to figure it out for yourself. I was like that for a long time, but then I figured out that I liked smiles, and then a whole bunch of stuff happened and a long time passed, and now here I am!” He spreads his arms, but Ellis doesn’t look up. He lowers his arms again. “You know,” he says, “you might have a chance to figure out what you want and what you like, if you come with me. We can get out of here together, and I’ll take you somewhere far away. Don’t you think that might be nice?”

She shakes her head, but it isn’t refusal, exactly; it’s confusion, uncertainty. “I want—I want…”

“Hm?”

“I want… to not hurt anymore.” She rubs her arms, carefully because she still has some scabs there from a week ago. “I don’t have to hurt anymore after they kill me, right?”

“Hm…” He gives it serious thought to match the solemnity of her question. “Well, I’ve been dead a few times and it doesn’t really feel like much of anything, so I guess that’s true!”

He lets the thought hang in the air for one selfish moment, curious as to whether Ellis will be relieved—whether she will smile. But she only lifts wide eyes to look at him. He wonders if it’s cruel to invite her to hope in a thing like that, and his smile goes crooked.

“I have to admit,” he says apologetically, “it can really hurt to die, though.”

“But then it ends?”

“Yep. Then it ends.”

“I want that,” she says, and he believes her: there is a yearning in her eyes, as clear as an ache. He feels something sink in his chest—something he might call disappointment—but that doesn’t really matter, does it? What’s more important than anything else is that he gives Ellis the choice that her family has stolen from her for years. Even if her choice is one that he doesn’t like, it’s his job to respect it.

So he says, “That’s okay. If that’s what you want, I support it, Ellis.” He takes a seat next to her on the bed again, then lies back to stare up at the soundproofed ceiling. “Can I keep trying to make you smile in the meantime?”

She nods. “Wh-when you come to see me, it’s… different. From everything else. You don’t… hurt.”

“Good.” Elmer smiles—and for the first time that day, he’s able to think that there might be something real about the spread of his lips. He thinks that maybe he likes Ellis, maybe cares about her. And so it’s nice to hear that he doesn’t scare her the way everyone else does. He rolls onto his side to face her like he’s at a teenage sleepover. “In that case, I’d better think of some really good jokes to tell you. Let’s see… did you hear the one about the two guys who stole a calendar?”


	3. Chapter 2

**A few days later**

Someone pounds on the Laforets’ front door.

“Open up, you bastard! Hey!”

Monica raises her eyes from the document she’s reading and sends an icy glare towards the entryway. “There’s a doorbell,” she mutters darkly, but she isn’t surprised that the owner of the voice has ignored it. Or overlooked it entirely. She touches her husband’s arm to pull his attention away from his computer. “Victor’s here.”

His eyes slide over to her slowly, reluctantly. They don’t focus well. She doesn’t think he’s been sleeping; if he has, she knows he hasn’t been sleeping well.

“I don’t want to deal with Victor,” he says hollowly, his voice too hoarse to sound cold.

“He’s not going to give us a choice.”

Another bang on the front door. “I see your lights on, you bastard, open up! I’ve got a warrant!”

“See,” she says.

“Monica…”

“I’m going to go see what he wants,” Monica says. “I’d promise to keep my voice down, but there’s no controlling _his_.”

“Why did he have to get involved?”

She raises her eyebrows at him, because he must know the answer to that question: must have admitted to himself by now that they were rash in deploying the Mask Maker immediately against a cult that’s not nearly as small as they’d assumed it was. And there was always the possibility that Victor would recognize the mask. Huey looks away rather than acknowledge her point, his mouth set in a grim line. He’s shaking, and Monica wants nothing more than to _help him_ , but this isn’t going to have an easy fix. They will need to eradicate the cult and bring Elmer home before he’ll be able to breathe again.

And so Monica needs to do everything she can.

She takes his hand and gives it a firm squeeze. He squeezes back without meeting her eyes, then pulls free to return his attention to the database they’re building. There is an all-encompassing urgency in his face. Normally, Monica would find it beautiful; now it only makes her heart hurt.

“If you don’t open up this goddamn door, I got a paper here that says I can break it down—”

“I’m _coming_!” Monica calls, letting her annoyance into her voice, and she rushes out of the study and towards the front door, leaving Huey behind for now. She glances through the peephole, but Victor is leaning too close for her to discern anything of use. With a sigh, she sets the chain lock in place before unlocking the door and opening it a crack.

“Hello, Victor,” she says, perfectly calm in contrast to his frazzled irritation. “Can I help you?’

“Monica.” His mouth twists in what seems like an attempt to shift into a friendly, unassuming smile. He fails and has to settle on an impatient scowl instead. A blonde woman Monica doesn’t know stands behind him, arms crossed and icy blue eyes trained on her. Seeing Monica’s gaze, Victor jerks his head back to indicate the woman. “Agent Jessica Sullivan. Colleague of mine. Is Huey in? I have business with him.”

“A warrant, you said.” She speaks a little coldly, but she is not as vicious as she could be; it never hurts to be underestimated. “May I see?”

Victor’s scowl deepens. “Just let us i—”

“Here.”

Agent Sullivan passes the paper over Victor’s shoulder before he can finish his blustery denial. He splutters, but Monica isn’t paying attention to him; she reads the paper—it’s an arrest warrant, not even just a search warrant—and holds her face steady even as the threat to Huey sends anger pulsing under her skin.

“Wanted for… ‘purchase of explosives’?” She reads aloud, her brow furrowed. Her surprise is not _entirely_ faked. She doesn’t doubt that Huey has recently procured some, and can guess why he wants to have them on hand; but he hasn’t mentioned them to her.

Victor only sneers. “Yeah, we’ve been tracking his purchases for a while. He may think he—”

“Is that legal?” Monica interrupts, her eyes narrowed.

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to kn—”

“No, she has a good point,” Sullivan interrupts from behind him. She eyes her superior suspiciously. “You need probable cause for something like that.”

“Not for Immortals, I don’t.” Victor looks over his shoulder, face intolerably smug. “Keep up, Sullivan.”

A short sigh. “Right, sir.”

For what it’s worth, Sullivan looks almost as skeptical of Victor’s grandstanding as Monica is. It’s not worth much, though, and Monica doesn’t let her guard down. “So you honestly think I’m going to let you into my house to arrest my husband on a trumped-up charge like this?” Monica holds up the paper. “Huey hasn’t bought any explosives. This warrant is nonsense.”

A vein pulses in Victor’s temple. “Listen, Monica, I don’t know if you know what your husband’s been up to—”

“Better than _you_ do.”

“You think so? Because he’s gotten himself into some real shit this time thirty miles south of here, and I bet you don’t know the half—”

“So this _is_ about the children,” Monica says crisply.

The abrupt shift in Monica’s attitude turns Victor’s face an unpleasant shade of purple. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, trying to figure out how to regain control over the conversation (as if he’d ever had it in the first place). Before he can even make an attempt, Sullivan speaks up from behind him with a sigh.

“I told you the warrant was an unnecessary maneuver, sir.”

“Shut up! You don’t know Huey like I do, alright?! He’s a slippery bastard!”

A minute portion of Monica’s tension eases. This is something she half-expected; it’s not something new she has to deal with. “The explosives charge is fabricated,” she concludes aloud, and sets to tearing the warrant to methodical pieces.

“N-no!” Victor retorts, a little too forcefully. “He _did_ buy ingredients to make explosives, and I think you know just who the hell he’s thinking of using them on, and _I need you to let me into this goddamn house_ so I can have a little chat with him!”

Monica considers her options for a long moment. Victor is beyond troublesome, but he’s stubborn, too. If he’s found out that they’re investigating SAMPLE, he isn’t likely to drop the subject. And besides—the FBI may have access to more information on the cult than they do.

She lifts a hand to the chain lock on the door, but doesn’t open it just yet. “For the record,” she says, “I was the one who did most of the work in kidnapping the children. So if you’re saving your breath for some kind of long rant at my husband, I’d prefer that you get it out of your system now rather than screaming at him needlessly.

At that, Victor grimaces, his eyes going shifty behind his glasses. “I don’t have anything to say about the ‘kidnapping,’” he mutters. “God knows the kids’re better off now.”

“I’m glad we agree on that,” Monica says. Finally she unlocks the chain. “Come on in. Have a seat in the living room; I’ll get him.”

“Thanks, Monica.”

The blow to his momentum has left him badly winded, and he and Sullivan follow her inside without another word. Monica leaves the two of them on the couch and turns towards the study, but Victor calls her back.

“Hey… Where’s Elmer? Is he home?”

She turns slowly back towards him, her face impassive. “He’s not,” she says, her voice not quite robotic. “He’s been away for about a month now. One of his ‘smile journeys,’ you know.”

“So he doesn’t know what’s going on? With the cult, I mean. …Since he has a history with it and all.”

Monica lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Who knows?” she lies. She chooses to note Victor’s discomfort—the awkward way he chews the inside of one cheek—and wonder just when he learned of Elmer’s childhood instead of remembering the way Elmer’s voice had faltered on the phone. It’s true, at least, that Elmer has nothing to do with the investigation.

In the study, Huey is once more absorbed in the information on his screen. Monica combs her fingers through his hair to seek his attention, and he sighs, knowing what she’s come for.

“He wants to talk to both of us,” she tells him apologetically.

With another heavy sigh, he stands and locks his computer. “All right,” he says. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Wait.” She takes his hands and looks into his face. He meets her gaze only from the corner of his eye. There’s so much she wishes she could do for him, wishes she could say to him and by saying make it so. But they’ve been saying _we’re going to do this_ for days. Saying it now won’t make it mean _so you don’t have to keep suffering_. Instead, she sends him an inquisitive look.

“He says you bought explosives?”

Huey’s eyes go hard. “Ingredients,” he says. “I want to have some available.”

Completely understandable, but—“You might want to think of a different story for him.”

Huey lets out a mirthless laugh. “Let’s go.”

Back in the living room, Victor is tapping his foot impatiently while Sullivan inspects a photo of the three of them from the mantel. It’s one from the 70s or 80s. One of Elmer’s favorites: even Huey is smiling in it. Sullivan’s eyes flick over to them and then back down to the photo once, probably marveling at the preservative power of immortality. Then she puts the frame down and turns crisply towards Huey, pulling a badge out of her pocket.

“Agent Jessica Sullivan, FBI.”

He nods to acknowledge her introduction, his lips pulling up in a plastic smile. “Can I help you two?”

“Sit down, Huey. You too, Monica.” Victor points roughly to the couch. He remains standing as they take their seats, and when he inhales deeply, Monica and Huey exchange a knowing glance.

Sure enough, the next words out of Victor’s mouth are at least twenty decibels louder than they need to be.

“ _Do you two have any_ fucking _idea what kind of hornets’ nest you’ve kicked over?_ ”

They could answer here, but they know better. Victor has every intention of continuing.

“What the fuck were you thinking? That this was an opportunity to play the hero? You think you’re some kind of ultra-cool vigilantes, is that it? Is that why you dragged that goddamn mask out of the 1700s? _Jesus_ , that was a nostalgia trip I could’ve done without. I almost wish I hadn’t recognized the damn thing, but then you two would be running around unchecked, poking at an international child-torturing cult with a stick because you wanted to play Superman!” He’s shouting so vehemently that his glasses fly off his face. Disregarding them, he continues. “Goddammit, do you even understand what these bastards are like? Did you have any idea how many law enforcement agencies around the world are trying their damnedest to corner them? The FBI has lost agents from our task force, _good_ agents, because these bastards somehow manage to stay one step ahead of us. And you know what happens when they feel threatened?”

Monica feels a chill go down her back and she glances towards Huey. “Victor—” she says, trying to cut him off, but to no avail.

“They just _hurt their victims more_! So good job, assholes, in your rush to be the big damn heroes you’ve ensued that countless innocent children across the world are suffering even worse than normal!”

He finishes his rant with a wordless snarl of frustration and retrieves his glasses from the living room floor, his face an apoplectic red. Huey is silent next to Monica, his eyes feverish and distant and his breath coming a little too fast. Monica looks away from him to glare at the two FBI agents.

“Are you saying that we should have done nothing, then?” she demands. “At least we saved some of them. Have _you_ ever managed that, or are you too busy losing agents?”

Victor’s face, which had begun to return to its normal shade, reddens again. “Listen here, you—”

“Agent Talbot,” Sullivan interrupts, “why don’t you catch your breath before you start shouting again.”

Her tone is disinterested rather than mocking. Victor gives another growl of frustration, but he takes a step back so that Sullivan can speak to them instead. She crosses her arms and glares down at the Laforets.

“Maybe you’re unaware of just how deep this operation goes,” she says, her voice cold. “Maybe you think they’re just playing at being a secret society, and the FBI’s inability to do something about them is because we’re pathetically ineffectual. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“No,” Monica answers steadily, returning Sullivan’s stare. They’ve seen how extensive SAMPLE’s network is; they’ve read, in their emails, what they do to investigators.

“Then what is it? What makes you think you can insult the FBI to our face?”

Monica lifts her chin and speaks honestly. “They can’t be allowed to continue. Every second that they go unchecked is another second of agony for their victims. Every second not devoted to their capture is wasted. You say you have a task force?” She gives a bitter laugh. “Of what, fifteen people? Thirty, if I’m being generous? Out of a force of thirty thousand? Am I meant to be impressed?”

“Oh, for fuck’s—” Victor gives a rude, forced laugh. “You can’t _actually_ be stupid enough to think that we’d drop everything else we do to protect this country until we can take down this one cult. Elmer’s off his rocker and honestly I’m not sure you two are all there either, but you’ve got to have some iota of common sense between the three of you. Be reasonable for one goddamn second!”

“No.”

Monica looks at Huey as he speaks. He lifts himself out of the couch, his eyes bloodshot but—for now—clear and composed. His mouth is an expressionless line as he looks at the FBI agents.

“I have no interest in being reasonable on this matter,” he says. “I want to put an end to that cult as fast as humanly possible, no matter what it takes.”

Victor sneers. “Hence your little explosives order from the other day.”

“No, those are for an unrelated matter,” Huey lies calmly. Victor laughs in his face.

“Oh, so you’re planning to whip up a bomb for some other reason? ’Cause I gotta say, that _really_ wouldn’t inspire me to take my eyes off you… if I believed it for a second. Which I don’t!”

“What’s your point?” Monica cuts in. She stands as well. “Victor, Agent Sullivan. Are you here because you think you can stop us? I’m afraid you’ll be leaving disappointed, if you are.”

Victor stares at her in patent disbelief. “That is fucking rich. We’re the goddamn FBI, you assholes. You’re announcing criminal intent to our faces. How do you think this ends for you?”

“We haven’t announced anything criminal,” Huey counters.

“Maybe not, but I can get your asses for kidnapping, so don’t press your damn luck.”

“You said you didn’t have any objections to the kidn—”

“Would you all just calm down?”

Sullivan’s voice cuts through the tension in the air. Her suggestion is not well-received; she turns and faces Victor’s answering glare. “Agent Talbot, I assume you remember why we came here?”

He curls his lip in an attempt to look scornful, but it’s counteracted by the way he flushes. “Of course I remember!”

“Good. It just seemed like this was the perfectly ironic time to make your ‘offer,’ all things considered, and I didn’t want you to miss your chance.”

Monica looks between the two of them skeptically. “Offer?”

“Yeah.” Victor puffs out his chest as if he’s about to say something particularly impressive and clever. “I’ve got a job offer for you two, and if you’re smart, you’ll take it.”

Monica and Huey glance at each other, nonplussed by the sudden turn the conversation has taken. “A job offer,” Monica repeats.

“Yep. At the FBI, even. Pretty cushy, right?”

Monica narrows her eyes, but Huey has caught on.

“You mean with the taskforce.”

“Hey—goddammit, let a guy say his lines, would you?” The vein in Victor’s forehead is twitching again. “Yes, we want you on the SAMPLE taskforce. How about it? Think of all that information you’d get access to.”

Monica has to admit it’s a tempting prospect, to see what the FBI—and, potentially, other law enforcement agencies across the world—have collected on the cult. It’s _too_ tempting of a prospect.

“What would you get out of that?” she asks.

“It makes it much easier to, in Agent Talbot’s words, babysit the two of you.”

Victor splutters. “You don’t have to tell them I said it like _that_!”

But Sullivan remains composed. “You’re not even on the taskforce, sir. Since I’m the one who’ll be doing the babysitting, I think it’s only fair that I get to describe it as I see fit. Besides, I suspect that trying to deceive them about our intentions would only increase their suspicion.”

She’s not wrong. Monica understands, now, why Victor has come here and why he keeps mixing up his story. “You want to make sure we’re staying on the right side of the law as we go after the cult,” she says.

“You bet I do. _And_ I wanna keep you assholes from leaping in and screwing everything up again,” Victor retorts. “Oh, and by the way, we won’t be _paying_ you for this. It’s more of a volunteer position.”

“So, not a job,” Huey mutters.

“Listen, either you take the _job_ ,” Victor says, emphasizing the last word pointedly, “or you get to decide which of you goes to jail for which charge. I got purchase of contraband on Huey and kidnapping and child endangerment on Monica. How does that sound?”

“Child endangerment? Really?” Monica asks. “Taking children away from that cult is the exact opposite of child endangerment.”

“Not in the eyes of the law, missy.”

She stares at him; inhales and exhales very calmly. Lets a tight smile come to her face that has nothing to do with what she feels. “What an absurd statement. I’m not even sure which comeback to start with.”

Huey’s hand finds hers then, and her gaze flits towards him instinctively. His eyes are serious and present enough to siphon off some of her cold fury. “Let’s do it, Monica,” he says in a low voice. “They have information we can’t get otherwise.”

“…Yes.” Yes; of course it makes sense to take the double-edged “offer,” even if they weren’t being threatened with arrest otherwise. She doesn’t like the way the FBI agents are treating them, _especially_ doesn’t like the fact that they think they can threaten Huey and get away with it, but it makes sense to take what they can get from the FBI while the option is available to them. She looks back over at Victor and Sullivan.

Victor raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?” he asks, smug smirk on his face.

“Yes,” Monica agrees, too bland for him to gloat over. “I suppose you already have working hours in mind for us.”

“Yep. 8-6, seven days a week, starting tomorrow morning.”

Monica stares. “Do you have any idea what the commute from here will be like during rush hour?”

“Aren’t you glad you’ll be coming in early then?” Victor says with a leer. “Listen, I know better than to think I’ve got you under control just ’cause you’re taking my fake-ass job offer. Of course I’m gonna eat up as much of your time as possible to keep you out of trouble. You’ll be reporting to agent Sullivan first thing tomorrow morning, and if you don’t like it, I’ll just run on back to the station and bring back another warrant or two—”

“Fine,” Monica cuts him off, all exasperation and impatience. “We said we’d do it. Unless you have any further business, I think that means we’re done here, aren’t we?”

He scowls at being interrupted, but doesn’t deny Monica’s point. Sullivan clears her throat.

“Thank you for your time,” she says to the Laforets. She doesn’t seem sarcastic—just professional, in a way that doesn’t match up with the rest of the conversation. She may be more pleasant to work with than Victor. Maybe.

Monica answers her professionalism with a smile that Elmer would have been quick to criticize. “We look forward to working with you.”

“Of course.”

Monica shows the two FBI agents to the door and watches them drive away in their little black car; then she returns to the living room. Huey is standing near the mantel where Sullivan had been scrutinizing the photo of the three of them. Ostensibly, he is gazing at the same photo, but the tension in his pose makes Monica doubt that he’s actually taking it in.

“They’ll have useful information for us,” she says, mostly to pull him out of his reverie. “You were right about that.”

A pause. “Yes,” Huey says. “I was mostly trying to keep you from going at them with a knife, though.”

She laughs faintly. “I’m not armed right now. I was thinking more along the lines of a crippling virus to some of their vital programs. The warrant database, maybe?” It’s more a joke than a serious threat, but not by much. At least the corners of Huey’s lips turn up, briefly.

“I’ll be fine,” he promises her.

“Yes, you will,” she swears back to him. And then, impulsively: “And Elmer, too.”

The dry humor leaves Huey’s eyes. “Yes,” he agrees darkly. He looks back at the photograph, eyes intense, and is silent for a long moment. Then, as if it takes him a great effort to speak, he says, “Monica—”

“I know, Huey.” She takes his hand and leans her head on his shoulder. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to stop this cult. The second that passes beyond the realm of what the FBI allows is the second we take everything we can get from them and leave them behind.”

He relaxes, just slightly. “We’re going to end up on the wrong side of the law after this,” he says.

“You know I don’t care about that. As long as we’re together.”

For a long moment they both gaze at the photograph. The joy in the picture feels so far away that it aches. Finally, Monica sighs.

“I wonder what he’ll say about all of this once he comes home,” she muses, half to herself. Huey’s hand tenses around hers, and she regrets saying it aloud. To reassure him, she adds, “As long as we can smile when it’s over…”

“Yes,” Huey says, his voice carefully neutral to hide the uncertainty that still lingers after Elmer’s phone call. They’ve tried texting him since then, and he hasn’t answered. There’s nothing normal about any of this, but they have to believe that Elmer is still Elmer. Huey raises his free hand to lift the picture frame—no, to lay it face-down. His eyes are haunted. “As long as we smile, he’ll forgive anything.”

*

Elmer attends every prayer service, though he doesn’t really know why.

They hold them in the basement of the Martins’ home. Ellis’s father leads them, and her mother comes, and a few friends—some from the hospital where Dr. Martin works, some whose connection to the family Elmer doesn’t know. He’s never known, not back then either; it doesn’t really matter, does it? They file into the room—this one is soundproofed—and file into the pews—the seats are padded, comfortable—and they’re all respectful towards Elmer, turning not just their drug-preserved smiles but also curious, admiring stares towards him. He feels his mouth smile back. He doesn’t think he’s happy; but is he any less happy than he usually is?

His ears ring when the praying starts.

**_Quiet the soul that must suffer_**  
**_And worship agony_**  
**_Though our god does not exist_**  
**_We affirm our god here_**

Ellis doesn’t scream, much. Her tears are mostly silent and she mouths the prayers more than speaks them as they strip her to the waist—careful not to disturb her headphones and blindfold—and burn new brands into her back, carve new symbols into her malnourished limbs. _Our brethren in the main branch choose to focus on our gods’ torso and internal organs to preserve the image that the god is a human like any other_ , Martin says, said once for Elmer’s benefit or maybe he says it every time, reminding the gathered believers, _but we know that our god’s beloved vessel has been sanctified beyond the human. We may mark her wherever we please._ And they do. And Ellis breathes in agonized, desperate huffs that Elmer can hear from all the way in the back of the underground sanctuary and they torture her until they win screams out of her small body. It’s easier, Elmer wants to tell her, if you give them what they want. Scream as soon as the fire touches you. It’s instinct to scream, after all, just an animal seeking help and comfort—but reality wears away instinct over time. And they keep burning her throat. Of course, of course she does not scream. But they hurt her until she does.

**_The vessel accepts its death_**  
**_The soul longs for death_**  
**_Yet the blessed goat lives on_**

He sits in the back and maybe he falls asleep or something, because it so often feels like he isn’t really there. It feels, sometimes, like he’s in the front, or he’s out in the snow before a bonfire, naked and exposed to the winter wind and watching his own red seep into the white at his feet. The memory isn’t quite right. He doesn’t scream like he once did, he stays silent like Ellis does; but his throat feels raw like it used to. He thinks of taking Ellis away from here. He remembers being taken away. He remembers the panic of his family, expressions on their faces like he’d never seen before; remember his father and mother tearing him out of the fire and running behind a door that locks and arguing: _we can’t kill him now, how will we get out of this if we have no one to pray to_ against _we must offer him now, we need his sacrifice now more than ever_ , their voices louder than the screaming that spun dizzily around him through his pain everything was pain then and he thought that it would be over, when would it be over

and then the shouting stopped

and strong hands grasped him and he screamed, screamed even though it would achieve  nothing but it did achieve something: a voice speaking words he didn’t recognize in a tone that couldn’t possibly be meant for him and a gentler touch. Blankets soft around him but still harsh on his scalded skin; lifting and dizziness and then a rough but steady rhythm shaking his whole body (when he rode a horse again, years later, the recognition was a vertigo strong enough to make him pass out) and then finally a welcome black swelling in his head.

Now, in the real now, he hears weeping, weeping: gratitude. Martin prays his gratitude with tears dripping from his eyes and those around him follow suit and in the front, Ellis is limp and blank, tears coursing down her face as her father holds her upright by the wrist. Martin adjusts something on a little machine he holds—the mp3 player attached to Ellis’s headphones—and she gasps visibly and then somehow goes even more limp. It’s relief, though, not new pain: the service is over. Martin drags her down from the raised chancel—he has told Elmer, with false modesty, that he designed the sanctuary himself—and down the center aisle between the pews. The worshippers lean in to touch her bare skin as she passes. She does not flinch at their touch, even when they gouge their fingers into the new wounds to revel in her bleeding and her agony. They reach the back row. Martin holds Ellis out to Elmer. Elmer finds that he is still smiling. He finds that he is smiling so broadly that his cheeks hurt. He finds himself shaking his head. No, he will not partake of Ellis’s suffering, will not pray through her. No. no.

“That is your decision, holy one,” Martin assures him. But rather than carry her up the stairs—that’s what he usually does—he drags Ellis forward and practically throws her at him. Elmer’s hands come up instinctively to steady her, only barely avoiding her fresh wounds. “Why don’t you comfort her? Do you think you can?”

And, without waiting for Elmer’s answer, he leads the gathered worshippers up the stairs.

Elmer swallows hard. Pries the smile off his face by conscious effort. He folds Ellis into his arms carefully and feels her shake. “Hey, I got you,” he whispers. Remembers she can’t hear him. Removes the headphones. “I got you, Ellis. Safe for now.”

Realizing who it is that’s holding her, she clings to him. “Elmer…” she whispers hoarsely. Her breath comes raggedly between quiet sobs.

“I’m here,” he promises. “You wanna go back to your room? Or stay here for a bit?”

“Stay,” she pleads. It makes sense; this may be where they torture her, but between here and her own room are her torturers, probably knocking back beers over dinner. Socializing. They’re happy up there, Elmer thinks, and he doesn’t know what he thinks _about_ it.

It doesn’t matter for now, anyway; they’ve got their own contentment under control, and Ellis is the one who matters. She sits in his lap, trembling, and Elmer strokes her hair delicately. They don’t hurt her head. But there’s still a scar under her thin hair, just above her left temple. If her father is to be believed, it’s from the time seven years ago when one of the previous gods rammed her head against a bedpost. Her older brother. This, Martin has explained with a worshipful smile, is when they knew that Ellis was destined to be their next god. She was chosen; their branch was set apart. That’s the story they tell, at least.

“I guess I can’t really ask you to smile right now,” Elmer muses. Mostly to himself. “Is it okay if I tell you a joke anyway? You can just listen. You don’t have to feel anything in particular about it.”

Ellis nods silently, nestled into his arms, and he smiles relief at her. He just wants to talk, really. He just—wants to do what he does, which is try to make people happier, because that’s what makes him think he might know how to be happy, too. And that’s just what he’s _for_. It’s always been true, for the first ten years of his life and then after, when he chose it himself, and then for the last three centuries. It’s satisfying to make people happy. He does it because he likes it, even when he has to suffer a little himself to win a smile.

He doesn’t think he wants to suffer for Ellis’s sake, though. That doesn’t sound _right_. So instead he thinks of the longest joke he knows, and he begins to tell it.

“So, this is actually a whole genre of joke, and everyone tells it a little differently, okay? But I’m gonna tell you the story of the shaggy dog. It starts with this British guy who’s about to move across the ocean to the US. But just before he moves, his friend drags him to the pet store, and he sees the shaggiest dog he’s ever seen in his life. Have you ever seen a shaggy dog?”

Ellis shakes her head against his chest. Maybe she’s never seen _any_ dog, really. Elmer continues anyway.

“They’re so funny! They’ve got all this hair, and it gets in their eyes, and they do this kinda _harrumph_ -y sigh to get it out but it just falls back in their face. At least that’s what they do in cartoons and stuff. Real ones are pretty cute, too. And this guy, the guy who’s about to move, sure thinks so, because he takes one look at this shaggy dog and he fell in love with it. Even though he’s about to move, he can’t resist adopting this shaggy dog. It’s just too cute. He adopts it and brings it to the US with him, and he really loves that dog.

“One day, though, he gets an email from his friend back in the UK, and the email has this ‘lost pet’ poster attached. There’s a family looking for their lost dog, and there’s no picture, but they describe the dog as really, really shaggy, and they live close to the shelter where he found _his_ shaggy dog, and they’re offering a reward to anyone who can reunite them with their shaggy dog. And so our guy is really sad because he loves this dog, and the dog loves him, but he figures it’s probably best to bring him back to his original owners. So that’s what he decides to do, ’cause he’s a little homesick, too.

“So this story’s already really long, right? And from there you draw it out even longer. Like maybe they get stuck in traffic and miss their flights, or he tries to get the dog through security in a weird way—I bet security’s gonna be really tight at airports soon, huh?—or customs gives the man and his dog some trouble, or they get in so late that they can’t find any cab that will let a dog ride in it—all sorts of inconveniences. The point is to make the story really long so that the listener is really, really eager to hear what makes the story so funny and they think you’re gonna pull it all together at the end and they’re ready to be super impressed!

“But anyway, so this guy eventually gets to the house of the family that lost their dog, and he’s got this shaggy ol’ dog in tow, and it’s this big, biiiig house, right? ’Cause the family’s pretty rich. So he goes up and rings the doorbell. And the family’s butler comes to the door, and behind him… is a dog! And that dog is like, medium shaggy. Not as shaggy as the dog our guy brought with him. And so our guy looks at the dog behind the butler, and the butler looks at the dog behind our guy, and the butler raises a snooty, butler-y eyebrow, says, ‘Our dog isn’t _that_ shaggy,’ and shuts the door in our guy’s face!” Elmer feels a relaxed smile come to his face. “So that’s usually the end of the story, and the joke is supposed to be that, you know, it’s all really pointless, you just told this long, long story and the dog wasn’t even the right one! But I like it, myself. ’Cause the family got their dog back—I guess someone else brought it—and our guy gets to keep his dog. Everybody’s happy in the end. So it’s a good story.”

Maybe Ellis doesn’t agree, because she’s sniffling against his chest. Elmer strokes her hair. “Hey, kiddo, you okay?”

“Th-they used to… tell me stories…” she says. “Like this.”

“Ahhh.” So much for her not remembering any of that. Elmer smiles wryly, glad that she still has access to that sliver of joy and frustrated that it’s so far behind her. All he can do is try to bring it back to her in the present. “Want me to keep talking?”

She sniffles again. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Well…” He doesn’t feel like telling another joke, but it’s rude to change the subject completely. “My friends and I, we have a pet, actually. He’s a black cat named Zosimos. My friend Huey named him, after a really old alchemist.” He snickers. “It’s too big of a name, though, so we usually just call him Zoe. Even though that’s a girl’s name. He’s a cat, so he doesn’t care.”

Ellis looks up at him, listening.

“I hope he’s… taking good care of Huey and Monica,” Elmer says. He snickers again, because that’s an absurd thing to ask of a cat, he knows it is. But something feels off about his laughter. “I hope he’s making them smile while I’m here helping you out. I think they’ve been really stressed.”

They’ll be fine—he keeps reassuring himself of that. They’ve been around for three hundred years; they’ve made it through the House Dormentaire invasion of Lotto Valentino, through the chaos of Szilard turning on the rest of the alchemists aboard the Advena Avis, through war after war after war, and as long as Huey and Monica have each other, Elmer hardly has to do _anything_ to make sure they’re smiling. They complement each other stunningly well, and Elmer’s always been proud that he pegged them for a good match immediately. And he’s been content to fit into their relationship, been content—maybe, he thinks, genuinely _happy_ —to live alongside of them.

So he knows them, so he’s sure they’ll be fine, but he has the sense all the same that it’s not going to be as effortless this time. Because of SAMPLE. Because they hate the cult for what it did to him when he was little. That makes sense, Elmer figures, but he just doesn’t have the same vengeful instinct and anyway right now he wants to focus on Ellis. He wants to help her; he’s not going to give up on her until she smiles at least one real smile or she dies. That’s what he’s supposed to do, isn’t it? He travels, he finds someone who has a hard time smiling, he helps them smile. That’s how it’s been for three hundred years. That’s always been what’s satisfied him.

He can’t remember what that satisfaction feels like right now.

But as long as he stays here, as long as he can find some way to help Ellis…

Her breathing is calmer now, and steady. “Ellis?” he whispers, very faintly, and she doesn’t stir. She’s asleep. Elmer sits back in the pew, moving carefully so he doesn’t wake her or bump any of her wounds, and he looks up at the sanctuary ceiling and he rests, too.

*

**The next morning**

**FBI Offices**

“Your SAMPLE taskforce is one person?”

Monica looks around the windowless conference room, unimpressed. It’s empty, save for herself, Huey, and Jessica Sullivan. Huey is worse than unimpressed; with a dark look in his eyes, he removes his laptop from its bag, takes a seat, and pointedly turns his attention towards what information they’ve gathered on their own.

If Sullivan is insulted, it doesn’t show. She receives Monica’s criticism with a raised eyebrow and a crisp tilt of her chin.

“Your _liaison_ with the taskforce is one person,” she corrects. “We don’t see a need to connect you with the rest just yet. Don’t worry, I’ll get you everything you’re allowed to have access to.”

Monica sighs shortly. “You really _are_ just a babysitter, aren’t you?”

“You got it, Ms. Laforet.”

_What on earth did you do to deserve such a thankless task?_ , Monica could ask, and it could be scornful or it could be sympathetic. If she wants Sullivan to think well of her, she supposes the latter would be wiser for now. So she gives it a try.

Sullivan responds with a quirk of her lips. “Agent Talbot finds me trustworthy and capable of shooting down unnecessary… nonsense.”

“I assume his word for it was ‘bullshit,’” Monica guesses.

“It was indeed. He warned me that Huey tends to have, in his exact words, ‘a load of bullshit up his sleeve at all times.’”

Monica wrinkles her nose at the combination of images. Normally, Huey would give a delicate snort here, amused by Victor’s overblown aggravation. When he is silent instead, Monica glances at him and finds that he is intensely focused on his laptop, probably not even listening. The intensity of his gaze makes her heart flutter; the pain behind it makes her stomach sink.

But she keeps all of this off her face and instead answers Sullivan. “Victor is mistaken,” she lies smoothly. “He’s always been suspicious of Huey for very little reason. For three centuries, even.”

“If that order of explosives is what you consider to be ‘very little reason’ to be suspicious of someone, may I ask what you think would be sufficient reason?” Sullivan says. And then, without giving Monica a chance to protest that Huey’s purchase was of everyday cleaning supplies, she adds, “Agent Talbot is less wary of _you_ , Ms. Laforet, but I’m not sure he’s right to disregard you so easily. Especially considering that you’ve confessed to kidnapping ten children before dropping them off at the station for local LEOs to deal with. Which I assume means you were responsible for drugging the cult members we found locked in their own basement, too. Or am I wrong?”

Caught between masks, Monica only stares back silently, considering the female FBI agent in front of her. Sullivan sighs.

“All I ask is that we be somewhat honest with each other. I won’t even ask for you to like me. I know we’ve forced your hand. If someone threatened someone _I_ cared about with arrest like we’ve done, I’d hardly be thrilled about dealing with them, either. But do you blame us for needing to contain you?” Sullivan gestures towards the fat manila file she’d brought into the conference room. “This cult is not a joke. Honestly, I still can’t believe that you took them on unscathed, even a tiny peripheral branch like that one. They see through cover stories in an instant. They go into hiding if they think they’re being pursued, only to pop up somewhere else even stronger. And all the while, they brutalize their child sacrifices and call that justified. They’re _insane_ , but they act with the prescience and confidence of those who are all too sane. They’re not something to be fought unprepared.”

“And yet we did,” Huey cuts in without looking over, his voice cold.

“You did. And you helped those particular children, I would never deny that. But now the rest of the cult is on high alert, and we’re here trying to clean up the mess you made and make sure it doesn’t get any bigger. So let’s work together, all right?” For the first time, frustration shows on Sullivan’s face. “Trust me, I want this cult gone as much as you do.”

Monica doubts that, but she is willing to believe that Sullivan hates SAMPLE, at least. It is an easy thing to hate. She exhales and speaks more patiently.

“I’m sorry for our tension,” she says, sounding sincere enough. “We have reason to… take this somewhat personally.”

She admits it only because she suspects that Victor has already told Sullivan of Elmer’s connection to the cult and wants to confirm her hunch. Sure enough, Sullivan’s face contracts with something unreadable.

“Yes, Agent Talbot told me,” she says quietly.

Huey fixes her with an unfriendly stare. “How much did he tell you?”

She opens her folder and pages through for a moment, then pulls out a sheet of paper and begins to read from it. “Your housemate of three hundred years, Elmer C. Albatross, was raised and tortured by an early version of this cult for the first ten years of his life at the turn of the eighteenth century. He was rescued just before he could be killed and eventually made his way to Lotto Valentino in present-day Naples, where he met the two of you. And, of course, he became immortal with Agent Talbot and the rest of you aboard the Advena Avis in 1711.” She looks at the two of them. “You said he’s away right now?” she asks. “That seems like… suspicious timing.”

“There’s nothing suspicious about it,” Huey says guardedly. “He gets it into his head at least three times a year to wander off somewhere in search of someone to force a smile out of. He calls them his ‘smile journeys.’ It’s just what he does with himself.”

“But he keeps in touch, I assume.”

“Generally.”

“Then does he know what’s going on?”

Sullivan’s eyes are intent, trying to read past Huey’s reticence. Huey only stares back impassively, but Monica can feel the tension coming off him in heartbeat pulses.

“He’s aware,” she answers for her husband in the kind of voice that warns against further inquiry.

But Sullivan brushes past the warning. “And you want me to believe he’s uninvolved? Not off seeking his own revenge, after they tortured him for—”

“You think we’ve got him deployed somewhere investigating on his own, don’t you?” Huey gives a harsh, inappropriate laugh, furious in his scorn. “You don’t know Elmer. Elmer doesn’t take revenge. He doesn’t resent. If you asked him, he’d say that the members of that monstrous cult deserve to smile just as much as the children they torture do!”

There is a tense silence. Monica’s hand finds its way to Huey’s shoulder, and he neither shrugs it away nor leans into it. Sullivan pinches her lips together in a frown and then, remarkably, apologizes.

“I’m sorry. Agent Talbot said something similar, but I had trouble believing it. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“You’re a federal agent,” Monica points out. “Prying is what you do.”

“Not without reason, usually. If you say Albatross isn’t involved, I believe you.”

“Yes, he’s staying out of it,” Monica says. It’s true if “it” means the investigation, utterly false otherwise; but Monica doesn’t need it to be true. She needs to be off the subject of Elmer, for Huey’s sake and her own. “Shall we get to work?”

Huey has already turned back to his laptop. Sullivan nods for Monica to take a seat.

“Yes, let’s get started.”

*

As they drive home that evening, Monica’s face is as blank as a mask.

If Victor wants to keep them from making meaningful progress, she has to admit—not without disgust—that he’s found the way to do it. Sure, they learned a little more today: that the documents they’d collected were the work of the cult’s primary archivist, and that a figure calling themselves “V” maintains communications between the main cult and its many branches. Both pieces of information are worth keeping in mind as they page through the binder on their own tonight. But Agent Sullivan is threatening to seize the binder outright if they don’t bring it with them tomorrow, and she refuses to answer half the questions they ask. All the while, she asks plenty of her own questions and doles out information with a coolly superior stare.

She isn’t cruel, but she’s as implacable as a steel wall. Under other circumstances, Monica would admire her disposition. Now she only wishes they were dealing with Victor’s spluttering bluster instead. They’d be able to run circle around _him_. Damn him for realizing it.

As traffic slows to an impotent crawl, Monica glances over at her husband. What she sees makes her catch her breath: his eyes are shut, his head drooped down over his chest. The tension on his face (ever-present, these days) is soothed, and he’s beautiful, and Monica would do anything for him, _anything_. She doubts he’s _chosen_ this nap—more likely that he’s worked himself into such exhaustion that it’s overpowered him—but she can’t help the heart-twinge of affection she feels watching him.

And then some jerk behind them lays onto his horn and Huey starts awake. He catches Monica staring and stares back, hollowly.

“How much further till home?”

“Still an hour,” Monica says apologetically, “Longer if the traffic’s like this the whole way.”

Huey’s eyes go hard with anger. “Damn Victor,” he says, and Monica nods in agreement.

For a moment, they’re silent as Monica continues to inch the car forward. Then Huey says, “I don’t want to keep this up for long.”

“Me neither,” Monica answers, and glances over to catch a flicker of relief on Huey’s face.

His voice stronger for her agreement, he continues: “We’ll learn what we can from them, and then we’ll make a run for it and track down the next branch on our own. And the next one after that. We’ll have to be unpredictable about it if we want to stay out of the FBI’s sight—”

“Huey, we can’t,” Monica cuts in. As he fixes incredulous golden eyes on her, she points out, “What if Elmer comes home?”

Realization crosses Huey’s face; then it warps into aggravation, impatience. “ _Damn_ him,” he growls, but Monica can see pain in his eyes, too. “Damn him and his _smile journeys_. If I knew where he was I’d wipe out every one of these monsters who’s so much as set eyes on him and drag him home myself, and if he didn’t want to help us out he could stay home and look after his cat.”

_Our_ cat, Monica doesn’t correct him, and waits for Huey to revise his anger into a plan of action.

Without speaking, he takes out his phone and hits one of his autodial numbers. But he grimaces and hangs up only a second later. “He’s got his phone off. Is there any way to track a phone that’s off?”

Monica racks through her memories of what she’s read on the subject. “I don’t think so,” she says, “but I’ll look into it.”

“Be careful what you look up,” Huey says, a flicker of sense passing through his eyes. “They’re probably tracking our browser activity.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Monica says with a roll of her eyes. She can handle _that_ much; she’s made it her business to stay on top of this sort of thing. The Mask Maker’s business, even if it’s all orders of magnitude more complicated than things had been back in Lotto Valentino. At the very least, she can find something that will track Elmer’s location if he calls them. She turns a serious gaze towards her husband. “Do you want to focus on that first? Finding Elmer?”

Huey is silent for a moment. “Yes,” he says at last. “Just to reduce the factors at play here. I want to know where _he_ is, and then we can focus on burning this cult to the ground.”

Monica nods. It’s a plan, for now. It will be something they can do together, productively, out of the FBI’s sight. And if they can bring Elmer home, some sliver of Huey’s tension will be relieved. Monica hangs her hope on that thought, and they are silent for the rest of the long commute home.


	4. Chapter 3

It really is incredible what human beings can get used to, Elmer thinks sometimes. Over the course of three hundred years, he’s had plenty of opportunities to think it _and_ plenty of reasons to. Usually, he thinks it about someone else, because he doesn’t so much _get used to things_ as he just accepts them to begin with. But this—this feels like something he’s gotten used to. Two weeks since he called home, and he’s gotten used to having his phone off and doing his best not to worry about Monica and Huey. To trust, instead, that they know what they’re doing, and that therefore he doesn’t have to think about them. He just focuses on Ellis instead, and he thinks maybe he’s gotten used to this, too. The prayers. The screams. The feeling that there’s nothing he can do for her that would be _enough_ , so he’s best off just… observing, and offering comfort when he can.

Elmer sits in the back of the sanctuary and he lets himself be used to it.

“My brethren, be at peace. We are the blessed ones, the ones who do not have to suffer like the poor, wretched creature you see in front of you.”

It’s funny, because they say all the exact same things they used to. Sometimes Elmer whether he’s really hearing it in the present or remembering it from the past. _He_ used to be the wretched creature, but for so long he didn’t know that was a bad thing because they all smiled when they said it. It might as well have been his name: the wretched one. And then, after that, everyone at church called him blessed and miraculous but they looked at him with sadness in their eyes and murmured _poor thing_ , too. The church was never good at identifying their own contradictions, he thinks. They told him it was a miracle—the Lord’s blessing—that his life was saved when it was, but never had a good answer when he asked why He hadn’t saved him earlier. It didn’t take long for him to stop asking. The question didn’t make them happy, and in his mind, the answer was simple, anyway. There was no god. He had never been a god, either. His family had been just as confused about divinity as the sisters who looked after him were.

It seems so clear to him now, so it’s amazing—almost funny, almost something he can laugh at—that these people still believe in god now.

But he doesn’t think this is the right place to laugh.

It can’t be the right place to smile, either, but that’s just what his face does.

Standing up on the altar, his hands gripping his daughter’s bony shoulders, Martin’s smile is more genuine. He casts his benevolent gaze over the congregation and speaks words of lofty reassurance.

“Indeed, though V has warned me of renewed investigation into the matters of our faith, I say to you that we have nothing to fear. I say again, be at peace! Those who would persecute us will meet with our mercy, to die a peaceful death at our hands. Our friends at the main branch are prepared to step in should the need arise.”

Elmer feels dread settle into the pit of his stomach. He’s talking about Huey and Monica. He has to be. Elmer thinks of his phone, sitting upstairs in Ellis’s room because this came up suddenly, today; one moment he was rambling on about something or other, trying to find _something_ in a long, largely pointless story that might catch Ellis’s interest because time is growing short now, and the next they were barging in and forcing the headphones back over Ellis’s ears and Elmer hadn’t thought he’d need his phone when he followed them into the basement. But even if he’d had it with him, would he have called Huey and Monica? They don’t want to hear his warnings. They want to believe SAMPLE is something they can vanquish on their own, just like the Mask Maker’s stand against the drug trade so many years ago. But if SAMPLE is going to fight back, Elmer has to warn them. He has to at least _try_ , whether they want to hear from him or not. And, well, he hung up on them last time. Maybe they deserve a chance to do the same to him.

Hearing about it won’t make them smile, though, and Elmer can’t like that. He thinks they need a good laugh or two, and he wishes he could provide it. He doesn’t like feeling so useless. To them, or anyone.

“Now, my brethren, let us pray.”

Elmer’s been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what he’s for, recently. It’s a selfish thought, especially when he watches Ellis tortured every other night; but Huey has always called him selfish, so it’s in line with his general attitude. Right? Even if he can’t sort out what he’s meant to be doing and who he’s meant to be doing it for, even if his efforts aren’t bearing fruit, as long as he’s thinking of himself then he’s still acting like himself. He still _is_ himself. He tells himself that, whenever he feels like he’s not quite—connected. Not quite there.

He keeps feeling like that.

**_Our god_**  
**_Comes forth from within us_**  
**_And returns to the void_**

He wants to help Ellis.

He’s sure of that much. That’s something he can hold onto. He wants to help her smile, wants her to feel at least one moment of genuine happiness. Her birthday is looming closer all the time—not even a week from now, he thinks, but they may not be precise in choosing the day of her death. So it could be sooner, could be further away. He doesn’t know the exact date, and he doesn’t need to; he just needs to do what he can for her while he has the chance.

He doesn’t understand why the thought makes him feel so uncertain. It’s a challenge, certainly, but he’s faced many challenges in the past three centuries. He may not succeed, yes, that’s another possibility, but he’s failed before, too.

**_Agony waits at light’s side_**  
**_Shame waits beyond the shadow_**  
**_We only stand in her presence_**  
**_And place a single slice of it on our tongues_**

Elmer’s ears ring numbly and the prayers and the screams feel far away. Like his senses aren’t connected to the way his mind is whirring in tight circles, looking for answers to ill-defined questions. Is he taking this personally—is that why it all feels so strange? Is he _allowed_ to? He’s spent three hundred years seeking smiles indiscriminately, even leaving home when he finds himself preferring Monica and Huey’s smiles over anyone else’s. He isn’t meant to have favorites. If he chooses a favorite, if he abandons the belief that all smiles are equal, isn’t that abandoning a part of himself? He’s believed that for so long. It’s what distinguishes him from everyone else; it’s something he decided for himself. It’s weird. He knows that. It’s the thing that only he believes, so it’s what makes him _him_.

But if he can’t help _Ellis_ —

**_The answer lies within us_**  
**_The world lies within her_**  
**_Pity itself is—_**

He can’t think. The prayers fill his head like heavy smoke and even when Ellis doesn’t scream he thinks he hears screaming. He tries to stay focused on Ellis, but his vision keeps wavering and he feels like he’s watching himself instead of her, either he’s up there on the altar or he just sees himself sitting there, doing nothing, nothing, nothing—

Suddenly, concretely, he hears a gasping sound like it’s right next to his ear and then something uneven and voiced, a forced and shaking noise. It’s unfamiliar. But he knows what it is. It’s laughter, broken laughter tinkling high over the steady toneless **_tremble at our god tremble at our selves_** and the worshippers never laugh like this. It’s desperate, it’s—

_Ellis_ —

Ellis with needles stuck between her ribs, with a branding-iron pressed hot to her shoulder where she’s been burned so many times before, Ellis shaking with tears streaming down her face—she is blindfolded still but her face is turned towards Elmer, towards where he sits every time they do this, and her lips are pulled back to bare her teeth like a smile (it’s not a smile) like Elmer’s smiles (it’s not a smile, it’s not a real one; it makes the apples of Elmer’s cheeks ache just to look at it like he knows exactly how it feels) like she’s trying, _trying_ to laugh for him—

And Elmer—

He doesn’t feel… _anything_ about it.

Not frustration, not hope, not horror, not anything. As soon as he realizes what’s happening, he doesn’t feel anything at all. He can’t really hear the prayers anymore and he can’t really _hear_ it when her laughter gives out and turns to sobbing. Only a moment passes and the congregants have all filed out and Ellis is sitting in front of him, shivering, weeping. She’s here, and he is, and everyone else is upstairs.

“Elmer?” she asks, her hands searching for him. When they land on his knees, he flinches, but he doesn’t know why. He puts his hands over hers, reassuringly. Somehow his hands are shaking, too, like he’s cold.

“I’m here,” he promises her, and takes a deep breath and tries to be _more_ here, for her. The soft pew, the scent of blood. The cold. Is it cold? It has to be, with both of them shaking like this. He takes off her headphones and her blindfold, careful about her new wounds. “I’m here.”

“Elmer…” New tears overflow her eyes. “I—I tried.”

She tried to laugh. For him. “Yeah, I know. Thank you, Ellis.”

“Did I do it?”

He can still hear an echo of her laughter ricocheting around in his head and he feels like that’s why his hands won’t stop shaking. But what is he going to say? He can’t tell her she failed.

“Almost,” he says. “Were you feeling happy?”

“I was… trying to.” She takes shallow breaths, trying not to disturb the puncture wounds left on her ribs. “I was trying to of how this is all going to stop soon. Then I’ll be dead. I th-think—I was almost happy about that—I was so _close_ —”

Elmer’s heart is a lump in his throat, but he has to listen to her. He doesn’t judge others’ sources of happiness. That’s how he is. He’s even been able to accept this kind of happiness before. And yet the words fall out of him anyway: “So… you really don’t wanna escape with me, huh?”

To his surprise, Ellis doesn’t answer right away. Her hand comes up to his face, touching the corner of his mouth. “Elmer?” she asks, her voice uncertain. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” He touches the other side of his mouth. He’s not smiling. He smiles. “Why would something be wrong?”

“You’re…” But she can’t finish her sentence. She looks into his face, her brow bent with worry. “Am I hurting you? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No, of course you’re not hurting me!” His smile fell away. He tries to bring it back. “I’m just, I’m trying to figure out how to help you. I guess there’s one thing I could do, but… I… Ellis, won’t you escape with me? Please?”

It’s the wrong thing to ask. It’s too selfish, selfish in the wrong way: he can tell, because dread crosses Ellis’s face. He finds himself babbling to try to chase it away.

“I know you want to be free of suffering forever. I know that. I get it. You deserve it, you know? You deserve to not have to hurt anymore. And—I’m not going to lie to you, Ellis. Being dead seems like it’s just nothing forever, so it’s not suffering. I can promise you that much. So I know why you would want that, and I’m not saying this because I think you’re wrong. But I just… I just want…”

He’s not chasing away her dread at all. He’s not helping her. Her eyes are wide as she watches his uncontrolled babbling, but she doesn’t interrupt.

“Ellis,” he pleads, “if you run away with me, I promise, I’ll do everything I can to keep you from being hurt like this ever again. I promise. I promise I’ll protect you.”

“Oh,” Ellis says in a terribly small voice.

“I promise,” Elmer says again. What is he doing? Isn’t he supposed to respect _her_ choices? _Her_ source of happiness? “Ellis? What are you thinking?”

She raises her eyes. “Is the rest of the world… scary?”

For a second, he’s almost smiling again, but he can’t hold onto it. “It can be,” he admits, his voice tripping over a laugh. “Change is scary, and new things are scary, and—I’m not going to lie to you, there might be other people out there who are suffering as much as you do, or maybe more. I won’t lie and say those people don’t exist. I think they probably do. But there are people who are so much happier, too. There’s happiness that makes the scariness worth it. I don’t know if I’ve felt it, but I’ve been around it, so I know I exists. My friends make each other so happy. They take care of each other, and they keep each other from getting hurt, and when something goes wrong and they do get hurt, they take care of each other some more and that helps things. I could do that for you, Ellis.”

Ellis scrunches her eyes shut and her hands come up to cover her ears. It’s a rejection of his words, he knows it is. He’s doing this wrong. This isn’t what Elmer C. Albatross would do. What _would_ Elmer C. Albatross do? What would the Smile Junkie do?

“Ellis,” he asks, because that seems like the right answer, “what do you want?”

She opens her eyes to look at him. “I want to rest,” she says, her soft voice breaking. “I want all of this to stop—I want—”

She has trouble finishing her sentence, and it would be cruel to make her. “Okay, Ellis. I get it. I get it.” He makes himself get it. Makes himself understand. He knows what Elmer C. Albatross would do here, but he can’t stop shaking.

Ellis stares at him, searching his face. Tears glisten in her eyes and her hands reach for his face again. “Elmer—why—why…”

“It’s okay, Ellis,” he reassures her as she traces the corners of his mouth. He has to smile, for her. That’s what his face is supposed to do. He smiles. “It’s okay. I’m just going to say one last selfish thing. One more, okay? Would you be okay with listening to me?”

“S-sure,” she says, her lip trembling.

He takes a deep breath and takes a hold of her small, trembling hands.

“Okay, here goes—”

*

**A few hours later**

It’s early when the phone rings, only 4 a.m. Monica sends a suspicious glance at the caller ID, then freezes.

It’s Elmer.

Monica tenses, immediately on her guard. She doesn’t _like_ that—Elmer is her friend, her partner—but what matters more than that, more than the scrambling calculations of trying to guess what he will be like and how she should respond, is that she needs to track his location. She flips on the device she’s hooked up to the phone with one hand. With the other, she picks up the receiver. Her voice is airy and odd when she speaks.

“Elmer?”

She’s further off her game than she realized; the voice is one she would use towards a stranger. And her face is doing it too, shaped into an obviously fake smile. Elmer will never let her get away with that—

“Hey, Moni-Moni,” comes from the other end of the line. “Is Huey around? I have a question for both of you. It’s quick, I promise.”

And his voice is devoid of criticism, devoid of reproach. He sounds cheerful. But at the same time, there’s something rote about it. He sounds like he doesn’t want to inconvenience her. She has to, first, make sure he knows that he is not an inconvenience.

“Sure, just a second,” she answers in the same light voice as before, and then presses the receiver to her chest to muffle it. “Huey!” she calls.

He’s awake already; she isn’t sure he slept last night. He hasn’t been well. And it’s easy to see why not, but the longer it goes on, the angrier Monica becomes at this damn cult for wearing on her husband’s heart.

He comes into the kitchen, his eyes wary as he sees the distress on her face.

“It’s Elmer,” she explains. “He says he needs to ask us something.”

Huey indicates the device by the phone with a glance, and she nods. It’ll take a little while for the tracker to narrow down Elmer’s location. They just have to keep him on the phone until then. Huey’s eyes bore into the tracker’s screen, and Monica takes his hand. “I’m turning on speakerphone, okay?”

A barely perceptible nod. Monica presses the speakerphone button.

“We’re here, Elmer. What’s up?”

Her voice is still strange. It has nothing to do with the way she’s gripping Huey’s hand, everything to do with the smiling mask she’s wearing. Why is she wearing _this_ face? Why isn’t Elmer objecting? It isn’t real, and he must be able to tell, but he isn’t even asking the question he said he wanted to ask. He is silent. Monica’s fingers sting where Huey holds them too tightly.

“Elmer?” he demands, his voice tight with worry.

They can hear Elmer catch his breath. “Um—” he says, and the waver in his voice makes him sound like a stranger. “Can I come home?”

Monica’s mask shatters. “Of course you can!” she answers, the words leaving her mouth before she can make a deliberate decision about her response. “Elmer, of _course_ you can come home. Why would you need to ask?”

Everything about Elmer’s question is reminiscent of a child: asking for permission, seeking comfort. That isn’t how he’s supposed to speak to them, and Monica’s heart is in her throat with concern.

His next words sound a little more like him, but still shaky. “Yeah, I guess I don’t need to, haha. I just thought you guys might be busy, with…”

“This is still your _home_ ,” Huey breaks in. He’s staring at the phone now, instead of the tracker, as though he’s searching for Elmer’s face in it. “What makes you think you wouldn’t be welcome? Because of those bastards? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Haha. Yeah, I guess so…”

Elmer’s laughter sounds fabricated. More fabricated than usual. Monica glances at her husband; he falls silent, reining in his vehemence with gritted teeth. They can sort out how they all feel, how this monstrous cult fits into the space between them, later. First they need to get Elmer home.

“Where are you?” Monica asks. “We’ll pay for the ticket if you want to fly.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Elmer, we can—”

“Really, it’s fine, Moni-Moni. Thank you!” Elmer puts a bit of pep into his voice, but Monica doesn’t believe it for a second. “I’m already in the Greyhound station, got my ticket and everything. I should get into New York by four.”

“Where are you?” Huey asks, because Elmer didn’t answer that question.

“Um. Actually, I don’t remember, I just kind of got on the first bus that was leaving. I know I’ve been here before but I can’t remember which station…” He mutters this rapidly, distractedly. And then, as if realizing how worrisome it sounds, he injects his next comment with artificial brightness. “I’m five hours away from where I started, I know that much!”

The joke falls flat. Huey states the obvious conclusion, his eyes burning: “You had to leave in a hurry.”

A moment’s pause. “Yep,” Elmer admits sheepishly, and doesn’t explain further.

“ _Did they hurt you?_ ”

There is deadly rage in Huey’s voice, and this time Monica makes no effort to pull him back. She feels the same rage, ice to balance out his fire. If the cult has laid a hand on Elmer, Monica and Huey will make sure they regret it.

But Elmer’s answer is a placating one. “That’s not it. I promise. I’m not lying.”

“Then what happened?” Monica asks, and then a terrible guess flits through her mind. Her stomach plunges and for a moment she feels a numb horror. But she fights her way back to coherence, tries to find a way to phrase her question gently. “Elmer, did they—”

“I’ll tell you later. When I get there. Okay?”

“Elmer—”

“I’ll tell you. I promise. But I want—I need to tell you in person. Not, like, from the waiting area of a Greyhound station.”

And if it’s what Monica thinks it is, that makes perfect sense. And there’s a tremor in Elmer’s voice again, and the last thing she wants is to argue now. She has to wait. That’s what’s going to help Elmer most. Huey inhales deeply, his eyes boring into the phone; he, too, realizes that there’s no point in pushing back here. Monica pulls a smile onto her face—a tender one, not the impersonal one from before, but it still isn’t quite the truth.

“Okay. You said you’re getting in at four? We’ll meet you at the station.”

“Um…” Elmer sounds awkward. “Can you not, actually? I’ll get a cab.”

Monica’s heart aches. “Elmer, we want to see you.”

“I know. I want to see you guys, too. Actually, it’s—it’s really nice to hear your voices, you have no idea.” His voice wavers again. He corrects it with a breathy, unconvincing chuckle. “I just—I need to wait until I’m home to see you. Then I can explain everything. Okay?”

“We want to come get you,” Huey says forcefully. “We want to see you. You don’t need to pay for a taxi.”

“That’s how I want to do it this time, Huey,” Elmer says.

He isn’t going to change his mind. Worry that he’ll hang up again flashes through Monica’s mind, and she finds herself answering, “Okay. That’s fine,” to forestall the possibility. Huey looks at her with fire in his eyes. She mouths _I know_ and squeezes his hand, then speaks to Elmer once more. “Tell us if you’re delayed, anything like that. We’ll see you soon.”

“Will do. Thanks, Moni-Moni. You too, Huey. It—it really is nice to hear your voices. It’ll be nice to see you.”

His voice is still shaking, and he hangs up just as the tracker beeps that it’s pinpointed his location. Monica turns it off without looking at it. It doesn’t matter, now.

Huey grips the edge of the counter until his knuckles turn white. “Monica, I swear, if they’ve hurt him…”

“He said he wasn’t lying,” Monica points out.

“But you heard the way he sounded,” Huey counters.

Yes, she had; and they’ve never heard Elmer sound so uncertain before. They’ve spent three centuries doubting that he was even _capable_ of that kind of emotion, and now, Monica doesn’t know what she can do to face it. Huey doesn’t either, she can tell. For a moment, she considers voicing her theory about what has shaken Elmer— _oh, Elmer, did they kill the little girl? Did they make you watch?_ —but one look at Huey tells her that the hypothetical is too much for him right now. She shuts the thought inside herself instead and reaches for him.

“He’ll be home soon,” she says, touching his hair lightly. He doesn’t lean into her touch, doesn’t meet her eyes. She continues anyway. “I’m going to make breakfast. Will you let Sullivan know we won’t be in today?”

Huey sighs and reaches for the phone, and together, they prepare to face the day.


	5. Chapter 4

Elmer hangs up the phone and exhales, feeling his hands tremble. Talking with Monica and Huey has shaken something loose inside of him, something that’s been lodged in his chest for two months without his even realizing it. It’s going to be nice to see them again. Maybe, maybe he’ll even be able to—

In the seat next to him, Ellis stirs slightly without waking, and Elmer feels his face shift. He’s tempted to put a gentle hand on her head, but he refrains. She needs her rest.

She’s brave, this little girl. Braver than he would have ever thought possible, given what she’s been through. Even though he’d been scaring her, even though it would have been so much easier for her to not listen to him and ignore his desperate promise, she managed to be brave and finally agreed to escape with him.

It had occurred to Elmer a week ago—when he realized that Ellis could have removed her own headphones and blindfold at any time—that the cultists relied on the sense of futility they cultivated in their victim to keep her in place. So escaping the house had been as easy as waiting until her parents were asleep, climbing out the window with her on his back, and holding fast to the brick wall even as it scraped his fingers to the bone; and then running, running, running when they reached the ground. It didn’t go exactly as Elmer had imagined—when he’d planned the escape, he’d pictured taking Ellis’s hand and running with her at his side, but that had been stupid, really. Ellis is in no shape to run. Of course she’s not. So he’d done his best to run with her on his back. Made it a few blocks before his legs gave out completely and he almost scraped her up when he fell, which wouldn’t have helped his case much, would it? But they needed to get out of there as soon as possible. They needed a cab, and then a bus out of the state. But he wasn’t willing to just pick a street corner and wait there.

He wound up ringing the doorbell of a neighborhood house and, most likely, scaring the crap out of the bleary-eyed woman who answered the door. Both cover story and smile—stretched with anxiety but still as friendly as he could make it—came easily to him.

_“Hey, I’m really sorry to bug you, but this is my cousin and she’s being abused and I need to get her away from there, can I hang out in your living room while we wait for a cab?”_

He’d wondered if he would need to show the woman some of Ellis’s scars and tried to calculate without looking where she would have marks reminiscent of a _normal_ amount of abuse. Fingerprint bruises on her wrist, maybe? What was a “normal” amount of abuse? But the woman never asked; instead her eyes narrowed with the effort of focusing at 1 a.m. and she asked, _“Do you need a ride somewhere? I can—”_

_“No, I don’t want you to get wrapped up in this.”_ Didn’t want to know what SAMPLE might do if they came across others that he’d gotten involved in the escape. Hoped they wouldn’t find their way to her. _“I just need an address to tell the taxi company and somewhere to wait that’s not the sidewalk.”_

She’d agreed to that much, and to turning off the lights, too, and then sat with them in the dark living room for twenty minutes while they waited for the cab. Ellis didn’t talk and stayed huddled close to Elmer, hardly daring to look at the woman they were imposing on. Every now and then, Elmer got the urge to chatter, but he resisted it. He was a panicked relative—cousin, cousin was what he’d said—of an abused child, trying to help her to safety. He looks twenty. He’d make the woman suspicious if he seemed to have it all together. So instead he stayed silent, too, except to occasionally reassure Ellis that everything was going to be okay.

His hands were still shaking, and he forgot to ask the woman to smile as they left.

The taxi ride was fine; the Baltimore Greyhound station was fine. When he asked for two tickets for whatever was leaving the soonest, the man at the counter had simply sold them to him with a bored look on his face. Which is probably not great, all things considered. Buying tickets to anywhere in the middle of the night with no luggage and a quiet, wide-eyed child in tow sure sounds like a kidnapping to Elmer, and he guesses that’s what he’s doing, really. Kidnapping her. But maybe it’s not surprising for him to kidnap someone in search of a smile.

Anyway, the clerk’s negligence had worked in their favor, and they’d made it out of Baltimore just fine on a quiet overnight bus, and now to whatever station this is—Pittsburgh? Is that it?—and Elmer had bought their tickets to New York and then waited until Ellis fell asleep to call Huey and Monica, and now here they are.

Elmer should’ve told them about Ellis.

He knows that.

They’re so obviously upset. Even from that short conversation, Elmer could hear Huey’s barely controlled anger, Monica’s lie of a lighthearted mask. He should warn them that he’s bringing Ellis along, should give them a chance to prepare themselves. It’s not too late to call them back and tell them.

But—but, but, but—Elmer knows so well that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if they said he can’t bring Ellis with him.

He’s not going to call them.

A gentle finger poking his cheek pulls Elmer out of his thoughts. It’s Ellis. She’s woken up again and is prodding the corner of his mouth, her eyes searching his face. Is he not smiling? He thought he was, but it feels strange, and the effort makes him weary. He looks at her and relaxes into his normal grin.

“Hey, I gave my friends a call while you were sleeping to let them know I’m coming home. I can’t wait for you to meet them.”

Ellis lowers her hand. “Are they like us?” she asks in a whisper.

She means to ask whether they were ever sacrificial gods. Elmer shakes his head. “Nah, they’re both normal. At least in that regard. But I promise, they’re not gonna hurt you. They’ll take good care of you and keep you safe. We all will, together.”

The trepidation on her face suggests she’s not convinced, which Elmer can understand. As far as he’s aware, he’s the first person Ellis can really remember who hasn’t abused her. It’s probably inevitable that she suspects any stranger of intent to harm her, and that’s why she’s been clinging to him silently this whole time. She’s being incredibly brave. He hopes that someday she’ll be able to understand that.

“Hey, it’s just about breakfast time,” he says, ruffling her thin, staticky hair. “I’m gonna get something from the little store over there, come with me?”

“Okay,” she mumbles, and trundles docilely after him as he wanders over to the station’s rest stop. Their hot food isn’t open yet—looks like they don’t make breakfast here—but Elmer grabs a bag of Hostess mini-donuts for them to share. The store sells a little clothing, too: t-shirts and sweatshirts bragging about the Penguins and Steelers (yep, this is Pittsburgh alright), leggings, tights. He considers the clothing and then eyes Ellis’s thin frame, still draped in one of SAMLE’s plain white shifts. A short-sleeved shirt is obviously out of the question, but there’s got to be a sweatshirt here that fits her.

“Hey, Ellis, you want some new clothes?”

He grabs a sweatshirt and leggings for her. On a whim, he grabs one more thing from the register and then pays up. It’s good that he’s going home; after the taxi and four Greyhound tickets, he’s almost out of cash. If Ellis’s family hadn’t been so willing to feed and clothe him for the past two months, he’d already be broke.

Is he supposed to feel gratitude for that?

They find the family-use restroom and Elmer helps Ellis change. “I bet you haven’t worn pants in a while!” he exclaims as she considers the leggings, and helps her bunch them up to make them easier to put on. Then the sweatshirt. He got a size larger than she looks so that the sleeves extend all the way past her wrists.

The shift goes in the trash. He pulls a few extra paper towels out of the container to hide it and hopes there won’t be any problem.

Once she’s dressed, he takes a step back and nods sensibly. “Well, there wasn’t much to work with, and my fashion sense is terrible,” he confides, “but you’re so cute that you make it work!”

She blinks, confused, and then whispers, “Okay.” Uncertainty hovers on her face, and she pushes at the too-long sleeves whenever they slide down over her hands.

Elmer grins at her. “Let’s go sit and chow down on these donuts, huh? They’re chocolate-covered, so they should be super tasty.” How long has it been since they last burned her tongue? Will she be able to taste things by now, or will it still be painful to eat?

Ellis follows him out of the bathroom. They forfeited their chairs by wandering off, so Elmer picks a quiet spot against the wall and plops down, cross-legged. “C’mere,” he says, and Ellis settles into his lap. He reaches around her to open the bag of donuts.

“Honestly, there’s not a lot of nutrition in these,” he admits, “but they’re really yummy. And sometimes you just gotta eat junk food!” He pops one into his mouth and then offers the bag to Ellis. She pulls one out, nibbles on it. As Elmer watches, her brow furrows in thought. She takes another bite, considering the donut as she chews it.

“Good?” Elmer asks.

Ellis nods. “I think… I want to keep eating them,” she says.

“That might mean you like them!” Elmer encourages her. “Do you think that’s it?”

Ellis twists to look at him and shrugs, looking embarrassed.

Elmer softens his smile. “It’s okay if you can’t tell,” he says. “You can just keep eating without worrying about that. How’s that sound?”

“Okay.”

Elmer feels a warmth in his chest at the thought that Ellis may genuinely like the donuts. It’s a stark contrast from the way the rest of him feels: blank and calculating as he tries to keep track of what they need to do next, and brittle whenever he tries to think of something other than that. He’s helping Ellis. He’s going to help her. That’s all he needs to worry about right now.

For now, at least, she seems content to eat slowly and silently. Elmer picks at the donuts as well—only eating one for every two she nibbles at—and takes his last rest stop purchase out of his pocket. It’s a set of translucent pink butterfly clips for Ellis’s hair.

“Want me to braid your hair while you eat?” he offers.

Her brow contracts. “Braid?”

“It’s like, um… Here, scooch over for a second.”

She obediently shifts out of his lap and he unties his shoes. Lining up three of the laces, he intertwines them in a quick braid and closes the braid with one of the butterfly clips. “Like that, except with your hair instead,” he explains. “It’s really cute! I guess pink doesn’t really go with the black and yellow, but like I said, you’re cute enough to make anything work. What do you say?”

She touches her scalp, oblivious to the stickiness of her fingers. “Does it hurt?”

“No, not at all! I guess it would if I pulled really hard, but I’m not gonna do that. I’ll be gentle. Especially around your scar.”

Ellis shrugs, which Elmer takes to mean that she won’t mind it, at least. Which is probably the best she’ll be able to manage for a little while. He takes the clip off his shoelaces and reties them—in other circumstances, he might have left them braided and made a huge deal of tripping over them later, but Ellis isn’t going to be the type who finds pratfalls funny, he’s sure of that—and gathers three little bunches of Ellis’s hair.

“How are you feeling, kiddo?” he asks as he braids. She turns to look at him, and he anticipates the movement, careful to move his hands with her head so that he doesn’t tug. When he reads confusion on her face, he answers it with a reassuring smile. “It’s okay if you don’t know. Can you tell whether it’s a good or bad feeling?”

She thinks for a moment, and then shakes her head.

“So, here’s how I generally tell the difference,” Elmer offers. “If I’m fine with feeling the way I do, that generally means it’s a good thing. If I feel like I want something to change, that might mean it’s a bad one. Does that help?”

Ellis considers this, and then lifts her chin as if to nod; but then she shakes her head again instead. “I don’t want to feel like this for a long time, but I don’t want to change it back. To… back there.” She swallows. “I don’t—don’t ever—”

“Don’t worry, you don’t ever have to go back there. I promised, I’ll never ever let that happen.” Elmer finishes the braid, catches its end in the clip, and tucks it behind Ellis’s ear. “It’s okay to feel mixed feelings, too. Even though that feels confusing.”

“Yeah, I think… I think I’m… confused.”

“Of course you are! Everything’s different now. I spent like three years in a state of constant confusion back at the church,” Elmer confides. He’s almost joking, but suddenly the thought makes his heart sink unexpectedly. “I’m sorry I can’t make things not be confusing,” he says, holding onto his smile even as he feels it grow heavy. “It’s a really different life you’re gonna live from now on, but I’ll do everything I can to help it make sense to you. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says docilely.

“Lemme do another braid on your right.” Elmer scoots around to sit on Ellis’s other side and divides out three more sections of her hair. “How are you feeling about meeting my friends? Are you ready for it to happen, or do you want it to be farther away?”

Ellis hesitates. “Farther away,” she answers in a whisper, her nervous eyes watching Elmer for his response.

He only holds onto his smile. “I can understand that,” he assures her. “They’re new people. It’s okay for that to make you scared, or just nervous if ‘scared’ is too big of a word. Honestly, I’m a little…” That feeling catches in his chest again, and for a moment his smile feels more deliberate. He blinks once, twice; swallows. “It’s been a long time and they’re feeling really big, negative emotions right now and I dunno if I’m really ready to see them, either.”

He’s not scared of _them_ —that would be absurd. He knows them. He knows they love him. He just feels like he can’t predict them the way he always does, and he’s felt so strange over the past two months that he’s not sure they can predict him, either. So how are they going to interact? How are they going to feel about each other?

But at the same time—he wants to see them as soon as possible.

He reaches the end of the braid and pinches it between thumb and forefinger; then he realizes he can’t get the butterfly clip off its cardstock packaging with only one hand. “Here, Ellis, can you pull one of these off?” he asks, and she does. She hands it to him and he closes it around the end of her braid. Then he pulls back to look at her, and his smile relaxes. She looks like a normal kid. Scared, uncertain, but normal.

“You really are adorable,” he assures her. And then, “I know Monica and Huey will think so, too. They’re gonna take care of you, okay? We all will, together. I promise. So it’s okay if you’re scared, but I promise, you don’t have to be.”

She nods silently, then jumps when the butterfly clips move around her ears. But she doesn’t seem to dislike it. Instead she lifts her hands to touch the clips, thoughtfully; then she sits back against the wall and huddles close to Elmer once more. He puts an arm around her shoulders protectively, not too tightly, and together they await the bus home.

*

At 4:05 exactly: [off the bus and catching a taxi! see you soon!]

The text comes to Huey’s phone and then, a minute later, to Monica’s as well. It’s almost a relief: time to stop pretending they’ve thought of anything else all day and prepare to welcome their partner home.

But only _almost_ a relief, because the anxiety remains.

Monica watches Huey as he sits in the living room, fiddling with his phone’s antenna and staring at nothing in particular. “If they’ve hurt him…” he says for what has to be at least the fifth time that day.

Monica answers, “We’ll get him to tell us where he was staying, at least.” From there, hopefully they’ll be able to use the FBI’s information to pinpoint who, exactly, Elmer was with. And after that—Monica is fine with calling it revenge. She doesn’t see a point in mincing words. For two months, Elmer has been out of range of the fierceness she has cultivated specifically to protect what she cares about. Once he’s returned, she can fight for him once more, and she _will_.

But revenge won’t _un-hurt_ Elmer, and because of that, Monica worries that it won’t fully be what Huey needs. He wants this cult to have never existed to harm Elmer in the first place; failing that, he wants it to have never come back. And failing that, what? Will eradicating it be enough?

Elmer’s return will help a little, Monica thinks, and Elmer won’t tolerate Huey’s grim demeanor for long. At least—he wouldn’t normally. But Monica thinks back to the way his voice shook on the phone and her stomach turns over. If Elmer himself is too damaged to even try to lift Huey’s spirits—well, Monica isn’t prepared to face that _if_ unless she has to.

She goes to the couch and takes a seat next to her husband. Leans her head on his shoulder. Wishes that he would at least return the gesture—not even for the sake of comforting _her_ , but to acknowledge that she has comfort to offer _him_. Instead he continues to fiddle with his phone, thumbing the antenna out of its case and then pushing it back in. He checks the text message from Elmer, looks up at the clock on the mantel. It’s only been twenty minutes.

“Almost dinnertime,” Monica muses. “Maybe we should make something for him.”

For themselves, too, technically. They didn’t actually eat the breakfast Monica pulled together, and didn’t bother with lunch at all. But what matters is that the suggestion does what it’s intended to do: Huey’s eyes focus for a moment in thought.

“Carbonara,” he mutters. “Elmer’s favorite.”

“I don’t think we have any mushr—”

Huey doesn’t let her finish her sentence before standing abruptly, ramming his shoulder into her chin in the process. “I’ll go get some.”

“What?”

“He’ll appreciate having his favorite food.”

Monica realizes that he’s serious, and she stands, too. “Wait, Huey—”

But he’s already slipping into his shoes and coat. “I’ll be back.”

“He’ll be here soon—” That’s not a _counterargument_ , that’s exactly why he’s running away. “Huey, you can’t seriously mean to—”

But apparently he does, shutting the door behind him without so much as a glance her way. The garage door grinds open and Monica has the sudden, bizarre temptation to dart out to the driveway and force him to run her over if he’s so determined to leave. But before she can decide whether the thought is serious, the car has driven away, and Monica is alone.

She drops back into the couch, her face flushed with—she doesn’t want it to be anger, but it is. Anger at the situation, at that damned cult. That much is fine. But she is undeniably angry at Huey, too, and that is what she can’t stand, not when she knows that he’s in as much pain as she is. She loves his selfishness, usually. She has forgiven it, for the past month.

But now it is making her so _tired_. She sits on the couch with her palms pressed against her eyelids and, for just a few minutes, lets herself breathe.

*

The taxi rounds the corner, and Elmer’s house comes into view. At the sight of the brick home he shares with his two closest friends, something shifts inside him. He smiles and reaches across Ellis’s lap to point it out to her.

“There’s my home,” he says. “You’re gonna like it here, I’m sure of it.”

For a second, he’s a little proud. Almost excited for his new friend to meet his old ones. But as the taxi driver pulls up in front of the house, he can tell that Ellis is anxious again. Her hands work in nervous knots in her lap. Feeling his gaze, she looks at him and her lips shake in what might be an attempt to smile. Elmer rests a hand on her head for a moment.

“Don’t force it,” he says, smiling kindly. “It’s okay to be scared about meeting new people. Honestly, my friends _can_ be a little scary sometimes. But they’ll do everything they can to protect you, I promise. C’mon, let’s go.”

They get out of the taxi and Elmer pays the driver with the rest of the cash he has. It’s a big enough tip that the man flashes him a grin before driving off with a wave. Elmer watches him go, then turns towards the front door. Monica is in the process of coming outside—but her eyes fall on Ellis, and she freezes. The door swings shut slowly behind her.

Elmer takes Ellis by the hand. _Here we go_ , he thinks, and leads her up the walkway. As they approach, he tries to figure out: is Monica angry? Scared? Just startled? She isn’t _happy_ with him, that much is for sure, and he halfway expects to hear the Mask Maker’s voice come out of her mouth when he reaches her.

But instead, she only pulls him into a tight embrace.

“Welcome home,” she murmurs.

Elmer catches his breath at the sudden movement, then exhales slowly. He squeezes Ellis’s hand once—reassurance that this is okay—then lets go so that he can hug Monica back properly. “Thanks,” he says. “It’s really nice to be home.”

She holds him tighter for a second. Then she pulls back, and directs her gaze at Ellis again. As she does, Elmer notices that her eyes are rimmed with red. But before he can discern anything further, she speaks.

“Who’s this?” she asks, and there’s something a little fake about her voice, but Elmer lets it go for now. He leans back a little to peer in the front window.

“I was hoping to introduce both of you at the same time, is Huey…?”

“He’s… not here right now,” Monica answers, aggravation sharp in her voice. “He left a few minutes ago to go ‘get groceries.’”

“Ahhh.” The cover story is so obvious that Elmer has to snicker. Has to, even as something pulls his shoulders into a droop. “So he’s avoiding me.”

“I’m sorry, Elmer. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to see you, I promise. He’s just… been under a lot of stress.”

“It’s okay!” Elmer’s smile doesn’t waver for a second. “There’s been a lot going on. I guess I’ll just introduce him later. You get to meet Ellis first!”

“Ellis,” Monica repeats after him. Her lips shape into an imitation of a smile, which she directs at Ellis. She crouches down a bit so that she’s at the girl’s eye level. “It’s nice to meet you, Ellis. You’re welcome here.”

Elmer touches Ellis’s shoulder gently. “Ellis, this is my friend Monica,” he says. “We’ve been friends for a very long time.”

“Hello,” Ellis mumbles, and she does her best not to shrink behind Elmer. She attempts a smile, but it doesn’t hide the fear in her eyes.

Elmer places a soothing hand on her head. “You really don’t have to force it, kiddo,” he says softly to her. He doesn’t say the same to Monica, though there’s obviously more desperation than happiness in her smile. She’s doing her best to put on a welcoming face, and he appreciates that.

“Why don’t both of you come inside?” she suggests, and opens the door wide for them. “Are you tired from traveling?”

“I’m pooped,” Elmer confesses. “And I bet you want to settle in, huh, Ellis?” He leads her inside. She returns to clutching his hand and doesn’t respond to the question. “Monica, I was thinking she could have my room for now. I’ll take the couch, how does that sound?”

To his surprise, Monica shakes her head. “Sleep in our room,” she instructs. “At least for the time being. We’ll figure out better sleeping arrangements when Huey gets home.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Do you think he wants to come home and see you laid out on the couch like a temporary visitor?”

Her voice sounds wrong when she asks that. It’s too bright, too cheerful when it should be dry and sarcastic. She’s putting up a cheerful front for Ellis’s sake, and part of Elmer wants to see her be genuine, but another part of him knows it’s better than scaring Ellis. He _is_ prioritizing Ellis right now, even though he usually tries not to prioritize. It’s temporary. Hopefully, someday soon, they’ll all be able to smile at once: Monica and Ellis and Huey, too.

For now, though Elmer just gives Ellis’s hand a squeeze. “Huey’s my other friend. He’s out shopping now, but I’ll be sure to introduce you when he gets here.”

“Okay,” she whispers, docile and uncertain.

Together, Monica and Elmer give the girl a quick tour of the house. Elmer doesn’t say anything about the papers stacked unobtrusively in the study, though he can guess what they are. He just takes comfort in what’s normal: here’s their kitchen, here’s their living room, here’s Zoe asleep on the couch without a care in the world. He’s home.

They finish in Elmer’s bedroom, and Elmer encourages Ellis up onto the bed. As she settles in, her eyes open wide. She kneads the soft mattress with her hands in utter disbelief, her fear forgotten for a moment.

“Nice, right?” Elmer asks. Ellis nods. “Good.” He tucks her in, takes the butterfly clips out of her hair, and crouches by the bed. “Now here’s what you get to do. You get to lie in this nice soft bed, all comfy and safe, until you’ve slept all that you need to. And no one is gonna hurt you or even wake you up before you want to be awake. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sleep well, Ellis.”

She settles into the bed, and Elmer waves on his way out the door, smiling at her. Monica smiles, too. But as soon as they’re a few steps away from the door—left open a crack so that Ellis won’t feel trapped inside—the smile falls off Monica’s face and she grabs Elmer by the wrist to drag him downstairs. He lets her pull him into the kitchen.

When she releases his wrist, he gives an apologetic wince. “Are you gonna hit me if I ask you to smile right now?”

“I might,” she threatens, and clearly means it. Elmer doesn’t think she’s angry. But she _is_ alarmed, and certainly not happy. She takes a breath to collect herself. “You could have warned us. We—I thought she’d been _killed_ , not that you were bringing her home with you.”

“Oh.” Elmer’s heart does something funny at that. “I didn’t think about that.”

“I thought that might be why you were so…” Her eyes search his face, and she thinks better of whatever she’d been about to say. “Why you came home.”

“Oh, no, I just wanted to get her out of there.” Elmer gives a laugh, only realizing after it leaves his lips how out-of-place it is. He shakes his head to chase it away. “I thought about telling you on the phone but my battery was low and I didn’t know what I’d do if you said I couldn’t bring her with me.”

Her brow furrows. “Did you really think we’d say that?”

“I couldn’t tell. I don’t know what you guys have been thinking lately and I didn’t want to risk it.”

At that, she wilts a little—or maybe it’s just a sigh. “We wouldn’t have said no.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Elmer.” She reaches out and takes his hands, peering into his face. “You’ve been through so much since you left home.”

His smile stays in place. “Not as much as her,” he says. “I’m just glad she was brave enough to come with me. She kind of—she really wanted to die so she could stop suffering.”

Something complex crosses Monica’s face. “I suppose that makes sense,” she says tersely.

“You all right?”

She closes her eyes and gives her head a little shake. “I will be.”

“Okay. Well, I guess I won’t tell you to smile right now—”

She gives a puff of a laugh. “Elmer, your presence itself is a constant demand to smile. I know you want me to.”

And he does, but he feels like there are so many other things he wants, too, crowding his head, and he’s too exhausted to sort through them. “Well, fortunately, I’m dead on my feet right now, so you can not-smile all you want while I sleep. You sure it’s okay to sleep in your bed?”

“Yes. I’ll let Huey know when he gets home.”

“Thanks, Moni-Moni,” he says, and he selfishly leaves that burden on her shoulders for now. Within minutes, he is fast asleep in their bed.

*

Huey takes longer than he needs to at the grocery store. He picks up ham, mushrooms, half-and-half, and a box of spaghetti (they have some at home, he’s pretty sure, but it doesn’t hurt to have extra) for the carbonara; a few other things he thinks they’re running low on. He finds himself passing by the balloon counter several more times than necessary, eyeing the bright yellow smiley face balloon floating up above and feeling a hollow weight in his chest that he doesn’t know how to interpret. He doesn’t buy the balloon, obviously. That’s the kind of stupid thing that Elmer would do, but that doesn’t mean Huey is going to do it for him. He just buys the food, makes an acceptable amount of small talk with the cashier, and carries the groceries out to the car. He drives home.

When he arrives, he’s surprised to see Monica sitting on the front step. Only Monica. His stomach plunges for a moment but he maintains his composure as he gets out of the car, pulls the groceries out of the trunk, and proceeds up the front walk.

“Is he not back yet?” he asks once he doesn’t have to raise his voice to do so.

Monica answers, first, by taking one bag of groceries from him. Her face is solemn. “He’s back,” she says.

Something’s wrong. “Is he all right?”

“He brought someone with him.” She’s trying to look stoically forward, but her eyes can’t resist a habitual flit towards his face. “The sacrifice he was trying to help.”

As he freezes in place, her free hand finds his. “Let’s go inside,” she urges quietly.

“Wait—”

“They’re both asleep. She’s in his room, he’s in ours. We’ve got a little time.” She tugs him forward. “Let’s go inside and sit down.”

He lets her pull him into the house, lets her deposit him on a stool by the kitchen island while she puts the groceries away. He’s glad to be sitting, which is ridiculous, because he was just sitting in the car. He shouldn’t feel as bone-tired as he does, and the groceries weren’t heavy enough to explain the way his arms are shaking.

When the food that needs to be kept cold is in the fridge and the freezer as appropriate, she sits down on the stool next to him and tells him about their new houseguest, a little girl named Ellis. Huey feels something hot in his chest and icy cold in his hands as she speaks. Rather than address that feeling, he grimaces. “He should have said something,” he says, voice full of a familiar irritation at his friend. That’s easy enough to feel.

“He said he wasn’t sure we’d say yes. That he can’t predict us lately.”

“What kind of excuse is that?” he demands, but Monica presses a finger to his lips.

“They’re sleeping,” she points out. “Stay quiet, okay?”

At that reminder, he falls silent, but he stands up from the stool to put away some of the dry goods. He can feel Monica’s eyes follow him around the kitchen.

“It’s _fine_ that she’s here,” he says, “it’s just that—”

But his mind hasn’t come up with what it “just is” by the time his mouth finishes the first half of the sentence, so he’s left glaring into the cupboard as if his problem is with the arrangement of pasta on the eye-level shelf. He shoves the new box of spaghetti into place and nearly slams the cabinet door shut, remembering just in time to be quiet. He closes it, gently. His legs feel tired again.

“We’re in the middle of an investigation,” he points out. “We’re due back at the FBI tomorrow. We don’t have a lot of spare time to look after a traumatized kid. We should let Victor deal with her, like we did with the others—”

“First of all, I don’t think _Victor_ would accept that at this point,” Monica breaks in. “And more importantly, I’m certain that Elmer wouldn’t.”

Something wrenches in Huey’s chest, and he finds himself leaning his forehead on the cabinet. This is what he doesn’t want to think about. But Monica’s voice continues mercilessly from behind him.

“He needs this, Huey. He needed to rescue her from them, and he needs us to be a home for her. All three of us, together.”

She’s directly behind him, then, and tugging on his shoulder to encourage him to turn and face her. He doesn’t want to. He hasn’t been able to look _anyone_ in the eye for a month, not even her, and she’s been tolerating that: letting him look to the side or over her shoulder into the distance ever since they first found the cult, but now for some reason she isn’t going to let him do that any longer.

“Monica—” he says, and his voice comes out strained.

“I know, Huey.” She turns him around and places her hand over his heart, and he can believe her: she _does_ know that his heart is racing, that it’s been trying to beat its way out of his chest this whole month, from the moment they first realized what the cult was up to. He shudders under her touch, still avoiding her gaze. He can’t take being seen right now.

And yet she does see him, and he knows there is love in her unwavering eyes. She massages his chest in small circles, and he thinks that maybe, maybe his heartbeat is slowing, just a little.

“Huey, you need to stop what you’ve been doing, okay? I’ve watched you close off so that you can hold yourself together, I’ve watched you function at the bare minimum of yourself, and that’s been fine with me, but Huey, he needs you.” She closes her eyes, and it sends a single tear welling over and down her cheek. “Something’s wrong. He’s acting like he normally does, but it feels emptier than usual, and I don’t know if he’s aware of it but I know he came home because he couldn’t face that alone, and then you went out _shopping_!”

There’s a note of rare displeasure in her voice on the last word, and Huey winces, gripping her arms. “Monica, I’m sorry—”

Her eyes fly open. She shakes his touch away. “You’re apologizing to _me_?” she demands.

“No, that’s not…” he begins to lie, but her eyes are dark and serious. His heart is racing again, fast enough to be painful, and he tries to calm it with a deep breath. “Monica, we can’t fight right now,” he says.

“You’re right,” Monica answers, her voice wavering. “We can’t fight. And for that to happen, I _need_ you to stop hiding yourself away and support Elmer even if it hurts. I don’t—I don’t want you to be hurt, Huey, but I think _he_ is, and I don’t think he knows how to deal with that, and he needs us.”

Huey closes his eyes and tries to pull Monica close again. This time, she lets him, burying her head in his shoulder. He realizes that she’s shaking too and holds her tighter. There’s so much that he’s been shutting out, deliberately, so that he can focus, so that he can _function_ —but the thought that Elmer might be in pain is so overwhelmingly foreign that it only feels like a gaping hole in his chest. He knows that Monica is right, but he doesn’t know how to begin feeling any of this without falling apart entirely.

But if that’s what Elmer needs—

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and this time Monica lets the apology stand. “I’ve been an ass.”

She gives a faint laugh. “I don’t need you to be kind, Huey.”

“No, I need to be kind to you.” She’s let him be selfish this past month, propping up the wreckage of his composure so that it doesn’t all collapse on top of him while he has things he needs to do. He’s noticed her support and consciously leaned on it. But who has done the same for her? She loves Elmer, too. Huey is not the only one who is in pain.

“I’ll do better,” he promises, and kisses her temple. And then she turns her face upwards to kiss him properly, and he answers it—first gently, then fiercely. When they break the kiss, he exhales a shaky breath, fortified once more by her strength. “All right. When Elmer wakes up, I’ll go for a walk with him or—”

But Monica shakes her head, to his surprise. “I think you should go to the bedroom and wait for him to wake up.”

Huey frowns, defensiveness bubbling up in his chest again. “Why?”

“Because you weren’t here for him when he got home,” Monica answers. “Let him know that you are now.”

And he has to admit that that does make sense. With another sigh, he nods, and turns to head upstairs. But before he can go, Monica takes his hand and squeezes it one more time. “Huey,” she says, “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Monica.”

“He’s home now. We have him back. We’re going to keep him safe.”

Part of Huey’s tension eases. “Yes,” he agrees. “We will.”

He squeezes Monica’s hand and then makes his way to the bedroom. He does his best not to open the door much, but Elmer stirs anyway and sits up. “Wh’ssup?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.

Huey feels a pang of emotion in his chest, so fierce that it’s hard to speak. “Hey,” he says, his voice a little rough. “It’s me. You still sleepy?”

“Hu—ey…” Elmer tries to make it an exclamation, but a yawn catches him in the middle of the word. He blinks heavily and tries again. “S’good to see you, lemme get up and—”

“Go back to sleep, Elmer,” Huey says, and he tries to put his comfortable ironic tone into it. “I’ll be here when you wake up for real.”

Another yawn. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“’Kay. You can turn on a light if you wanna read or something.”

“Are you sure?”

But Elmer has already lain back down and pulled the covers up to his chin. His lack of answer suggests that he’s already asleep again. To test the theory, Huey turns his desk lamp onto its lowest setting. Elmer doesn’t budge.

Huey watches him for a long moment, heart beating fast. Then he pulls a book off the shelf and settles in to wait for his partner to wake.


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think most of my readers already know this, or you've spotted it in the tags, but in case you missed it, I should clarify that Huey is consciously in love with Elmer in this AU and the Mask Maker Trio is a polyam situation.

Elmer sleeps for another hour. Huey pretends to make progress through the book he chose, though none of it sticks in his mind. He’s still “reading” when Elmer wakes up.

“Good book?”

Huey looks over at his partner. There’s a smile on Elmer’s face—one that looks like his normal grin—and he’s sitting up and looking at Huey. Huey shrugs. “It’s all right,” he says, and closes the book and turns up his lamp. “It’s just about seven. Do you want dinner? I bought ingredients for carbonara.”

“My favorite!” Elmer exclaims.

“Yes.”

“I wonder what Ellis will think of it…”

Huey fiddles with the corner of his book. “You would know that better than I would,” he says carefully. He hasn’t met Ellis yet; isn’t ready to. One thing at a time.

But Elmer only shrugs and leans back in bed. “I dunno about that. I just know that she hasn’t really figured out how to like things yet.”

“…I see.”

It becomes, for a moment, unbearable to look at Elmer. Huey looks down at the desk instead, wondering if he has the right to voice this thought. Elmer shifts in the bed.

“I bet she’ll love it,” he concludes. “Carbonara’s great.”

A sidelong glance confirms that he’s still smiling, like he always does, but something about the smile makes Huey’s stomach drop. Elmer meets Huey’s eyes for a brief second and then looks up at the ceiling. His smile trembles for a moment, but it stays in place. Huey can’t stand to watch it any longer.

“Elmer,” he says, “that smile on your face…”

Elmer closes his eyes when Huey speaks and takes a deep breath, in and out. Huey falters. So Elmer opens his eyes again and finishes Huey’s sentence for him:

“Yeah, I know. It’s totally fake.”

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, technically facing Huey. But he doesn’t look at his friend. He looks down at his feet, kicking them back and forth like a child.

“You know how if you write a word over and over, it stops looking like a word, and you suddenly wonder if you’ve been spelling it wrong the whole time? And like, you _know_ you know the word, and you think about the sounds and the individual letters and how they fit together, and it should make sense, but it doesn’t, it just looks wrong?” He finishes with a shrug. “When you think about it, the most surprising thing is that this has never happened to me before.”

The smile has fallen off his face as he speaks. Huey feels unsettled, even more so than he’s been by the phone calls. It’s one thing to _hear_ genuine emotion from Elmer, rather than methodical imitation of his surroundings; to see it in person makes Huey’s heart pound. He wonders if he’s been selfish, never allowing Elmer to feel this way before.

“What happened?’ he asks.

Elmer glances at him once before lowering his eyes. He looks numb.

“Ellis is a lot like me,” he answers, no heaviness in his voice, but Huey can see the way his shoulders are weighed down. He thinks Elmer probably isn’t referring to the cult’s abuse, or not _just_ that. Is joy as foreign to Ellis as it is to Elmer? _What if you can’t help her_ , Huey had asked a month ago, and Elmer hadn’t seemed to acknowledge the possibility then; but now he does, and this, Huey thinks, might be the closest Elmer’s come to despair in the three hundred years that they’ve known each other.

His next movement is automatic; before he knows it, he’s sitting on the bed next to Elmer, and his arms are around Elmer’s shoulder before Elmer can even draw a surprised breath. He holds Elmer tightly, trying to offer wordless comfort that doesn’t need to be funneled through logic and verbalization. Comfort that can’t be shaken by such things, either. For a moment, Elmer is frozen; then he exhales into the embrace, not wrapping his arms around Huey in return but clutching at the corner of his shirt as if to say _don’t go_.

“She doesn’t understand happiness,” he says. “She doesn’t get that it’s an option for her. Which I understand, given what they were doing to her. I was that way too, right? And I’m still not great at it. Even worse recently, actually…” He gives a laugh that isn’t joyful. It sounds all wrong, coming from him. Huey continues to hold him tightly.

“You’ve dealt with your ‘difficult cases’ before,” he points out quietly. He knows there’s more to it than that, of course, and he waits for Elmer’s counterargument.

Elmer answers by burying his face in Huey’s shoulder. “She wants to die,” he says. “She would have rather died than escape with me, and I think she would’ve… smiled for me, if I killed her before her family could. But I couldn’t do it. I argued with her. I made her change her mind, even though she didn’t want to. Even though I still don’t know whether she can be happy.”

“She has a better chance here than she did there.”

“Yeah… yeah. I do believe that. I think she might really have a chance to be happy here, and I want to help her learn that. But I still feel really selfish for it.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, yeah. No one’s ever bothered to listen to what _she_ thinks will make her happy before, you know? Because they didn’t want her to be happy. So I tried to do the opposite of that, I tried to actually listen to what she had to say and what she thinks she wants, but when it came to letting her die, I just… couldn’t. Even though she would have smiled! I know she would have! I mean, isn’t that what I’m supposed to be after? Isn’t that the whole point?”

“I thought the point was your satisfaction, and other people’s smiles were just tools to that end,” Huey says, an edge of fond irony to his voice. “So it wouldn’t satisfy you if she died. What’s wrong with that? You’ve always been selfish, Elmer.”

“Yeah, but… in a benign way, mostly. I’ve always been after people’s smiles. Maybe that kind of selfishness was okay and this one isn’t.” He pulls away a little and sits hunched, looking down at his hands. “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve lost it.”

“Lost what?”

“Lost… _it_. The point. Why do people’s smiles satisfy me? Why do I fixate on that? I had this framework figured out for my whole life, you know. I knew who I was. And then I spent some time with Ellis’s family, and…” He clenches and unclenches his hands. “None of it feels real or connected anymore. I feel like there’s nothing underneath my skin except maybe a mess of jumbled heartbeats. …I’m not making any sense. At all. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Huey says, and then, “Let me take your hand.”

“Huh? …Okay.”

Elmer holds out his left hand for Huey to take. Huey looks down at their clasped hands as he speaks. He can feel Elmer’s pulse in his palm.

“There have been times when you’ve felt like that to me,” he admits. “Just… something writhing under empty skin. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like a heart, just a brain, all calculation and optimization and trade-offs in service to your stupid smile addiction.”

Elmer makes another almost-laugh. “Yeah…”

“But that’s not what you want.”

“I mean, I… I thought I was managing to be something else. But I can’t remember what. Or why I thought that. I guess I was just fooling myself, which I kind of knew, but I thought maybe if I could fool myself hard enough I’d kind of loop around backwards and figure it out. Like I could trick myself into figuring out happiness.” He sends a shamed glance Huey’s way. “I thought—I honestly thought it was working, these past few decades. I thought I was actually happy living here with you two.”

That gives Huey pause. “You’ve never mentioned that.”

Elmer’s lips pull back in a pained approximation of a smile. “I was kind of keeping it a secret on purpose. I didn’t want you guys to tell me I had it wrong…”

“That’s not what I mean.” Huey peers into his partner’s face. “Elmer, we’ve known. We could tell you were happy.”

“Oh.” Pure surprise crosses Elmer’s face. “Really?”

“We just thought you weren’t aware. And you seemed so settled into the idea that happiness was foreign to you—it’s been three centuries, after all. We didn’t want to push you into an existential crisis.” He smirks wryly and lets out a chuckle. “See where that’s gotten us.”

“Where?” Elmer asks.

“You’re having an existential crisis,” Huey answers him bluntly, lips still curled upward.

“Am I?” Elmer’s brow furrows as he looks into Huey’s face. “Is that funny?”

“God, no, you’re clearly miserable and it’s painful to watch, but—” He clasps Elmer’s hand tightly and leans on his shoulder. “It’s just… really good to see you again.”

Elmer inhales deeply. “So I still… seem like me?” he asks. “You’re sure?”

“Don’t you feel like yourself?”

“I don’t know. I think that’s what I lost. I thought I knew who I was, but I just… stopped being able to connect with that while I was there.”

“By ‘there,’ you mean with the cult.”

“With Ellis’s family,” Elmer replies, evasive.

But Huey shakes his head. “Elmer, this isn’t about how much I hate those bastards. Trust me, you’ll know when it is.” He bares his teeth in a lean, dangerous smile for just a moment; then he is solemn again. “Being with them hurt you.”

“They didn’t—”

“Maybe not deliberately,” Huey interrupts. “Maybe not in any active way, but… Elmer, we could tell from the moment you first called home that they’d gotten inside your head. We could tell something was wrong with you.”

Elmer doesn’t seem to consider this good news. “I was trying to be normal…”

“Elmer.” Huey looks into his partner’s eyes. They’re wandering, lost like they’ve never been before. It looks out-of-place on Elmer, but it looks _honest_. “You don’t have to try. You didn’t lose who you were. _You’re still you_. I can still see _you_. Not some different person, not an empty shell trying to project the right face, but just you.” He touches the side of Elmer’s face gently. “My dear friend, who tries to make others smile because that’s what the bastards who brought him into the world used him for; who has taken that unforgivable, cruel burden and made it his own sense of purpose. Made it something he finds satisfaction in, and joy. You’re still here, Elmer. They may have made you feel like you were losing yourself, but you knew that if you came home, we’d help you find yourself again, didn’t you?”

Elmer puts his hand over Huey’s. He leans into Huey’s touch, but a wry smile tugs at his lips.

“I don’t really know the answer to that question. Is that okay?” Huey nods and lets him continue. “I just knew that I wanted—wanted to come home. I wanted to see you guys again. I wanted to be with you.”

“And now here you are,” Huey says softly.

“Yeah,” Elmer says, almost smiling.

Huey presses his forehead to Elmer’s, and then leans in for a kiss. Elmer answers it, warm and gentle and present. “You’re here,” Huey repeats when they break the kiss, but now the words resonate in his chest like he’s realizing for the first time that they’re true. Elmer’s here. He’s home. He’s _safe_. Huey bites his lip and pulls Elmer closer, trying to keep his breath from coming raggedly. It only gets harder when Elmer’s arms encircle him; everything he’s been fighting all month is hitting him at once.

“Huey?” Elmer says. “You okay? You seem upset.”

He shakes his head, tries to pull himself together. “I’m fine,” he says, but he only manages to sound as harried as he feels. “I’m supposed to be comforting you. Monica sent me in here for _you_.”

Elmer gives a chuckle, and this time, it sounds like him. “Everything Monica does is about you, Huey. You know that.”

He’s right. Of course he is. A wave of indescribable emotion flows over Huey and he sags in Elmer’s arms and laughs all at once.

He doesn’t know how he’d survive these emotions if he didn’t have Monica and Elmer by his side. But that’s the thing: they’re never going to leave him alone to try. It’s easier to breathe, now. Easier than it’s been in a month.

“You’d think I’d know how devious my wife is,” he remarks, softly sarcastic. “We’re shameless schemers, all three of us.”

“Yeah,” Elmer says. “I think you’re right about that.”

*

Monica’s phone buzzes with a text message from Huey.

[We talked. He’s doing ok. Asks if you can check on Ellis?]

Monica hesitates, and then texts back her honest question: [How should I treat her?]

The answering text comes from Huey’s number, but the punctuation style marks it as Elmer’s words: [you were doing good before. be gentle + nice. give her choices but she might not be able to choose]

Okay. Monica takes a deep breath. [Got it. I’ll see how she’s doing.]

She finds herself walking carefully up the stairs—avoiding the spots that creak so that her advance is silent. As she nears the second floor, a faint whiff of urine reaches her nostrils. She winces, but by the time she hesitates by the door that hangs slightly ajar, there’s a gentle smile on her face.

“Ellis? Are you in there? It’s Monica.”

A long pause. Then, “…Yeah.”

“Can I come in and say hi?”

“…Okay.”

She pushes the door open all the way to see that Ellis is sitting in bed, looking at the door with wide, solemn eyes. The smell of urine is stronger, and a glance confirms that she did indeed wet the bed, but she’s sitting in the wet sheets without seeming to mind it. Monica can’t stop herself from wondering if this is something she’s used to. To stifle the thought, she asks, “How are you feeling?”

Ellis brow furrows and she shrugs, wincing back on herself. She doesn’t speak.

A more precise question: “Did you sleep well?”

Ellis considers the query for a brief moment before surprise crosses her face. “No one… made me wake up,” she says, something like wonder in her voice.

“Good.” Monica comes further into the room, watching Ellis’s face closely to make sure she isn’t overstepping the girl’s boundaries. Or does she have boundaries at all? Would she know how to defend them, if she did?

“Ellis,” she says quietly, “would you like to take a bath?”

The girl nods and untangles herself from the sheets. She has to hop a little to get down, and once she’s standing, she reaches for the sheets and begins to strip the bed. So, yes. She’s done this before.

Monica makes sure her anger at the cult stays off her face. Instead she wears surprise and helpfulness. She reaches forward, offering, “Ah, I can take care of that!”

But Ellis flinches at her sudden movement, dropping the sheets to contract her arms close to her body. Her eyes are wide and wary—but they’re resigned, too. Monica is glad that Huey is busy with Elmer; he wouldn’t be able to hide anger like she’s feeling now. He wouldn’t be able to summon a face that’s unassuming and gentle and sweet. His hands would have shaken in a way that hers do not as she holds them up in a gesture of innocence.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Ellis, I promise, I’m not going to hurt you.” She kneels down in front of the girl so that their lines of sight match. “You never should have been hurt the way you were. And Elmer and Huey and I are going to make sure no one hurts you again. I promise.”

Ellis only looks at her, her grip on her own arms slowly loosening. Monica gives her a welcoming smile.

“I’ll take care of the sheets in a bit,” she says. “Okay? Let’s just get you set up with a bath.”

She leads Ellis into the bathroom. The girl trails after her silently, and Monica wonders if she should be filling the silence with meaningless chatter like Elmer would. But she doesn’t have it in her to ramble on like that. Besides, Ellis doesn’t really seem _troubled_. Just quiet.

Monica leaves the door open a crack so that Ellis won’t feel trapped. Then Ellis begins taking off her sweatshirt, and Monica braces herself. She knows what she will see. She _should_ know what she will see. She has long since grown used to Elmer’s scars, and she knows that Ellis will be scarred, too. And probably visibly malnourished. As Ellis turns away and pulls the sweatshirt over her head, Monica even reminds herself that the girl probably has some fresh wounds. She knows what she will see.

But when Ellis sets the sweatshirt aside, Monica’s blood still turns to ice.

An enormous keloid sprawls across the little girl’s back, evidence of repeated whippings, and around its edges the word GOD is carved in block letters over and over again. Five narrow scars encircle one stick-thin arm, _despicably_ regular and even. There are brands littered across her back and chest, some of them new, and an uneven burn over her stomach nestled under ribs that Monica can count without effort. She takes off her leggings. Her right thigh is striped with long, carved scars, and a chemical burn trails from her left hip to just above her knee. Even her feet bear short, pale scars.

Monica forces herself to inhale, exhale. She forces herself to do it again, at normal speed. She looks to Ellis’s face to see what she needs—but there is nothing new on the girl’s face, nothing but wary patience. All Monica needs to do is speak gently.

She slips past the girl to turn on the water. “What temperature do you like?” she asks.

Ellis shakes her head, uncertain.

That’s fine. Monica still speaks calmly, careful not to hound her. “Do you like it to be warm or cold?”

Another shake of the head. But Ellis’s arms come up to wrap around her sides, protecting her stomach where it’s burned. Better to err on the side of cool, then, Monica deduces, and she’ll watch to see if Ellis starts shivering. She adjusts the temperature.

“Here,” she says once it’s just slightly cooler than her own preference. “Give it a try? If it’s not a nice temperature, we can work together to find the right one.”

Ellis nods. She doesn’t test the water with her hand, though; she just lifts one foot over the side of the tub and steps in. But she doesn’t flinch as she makes contact with the water, so it can’t be too bad. Monica lets the tub fill before reaching for the pouf and the shower gel. “Ellis? Can you bathe yourself, or would you like my help?”

Ellis lifts her hand and takes the pouf from her. She washes herself with delicate care, moving swiftly over old scars and gingerly over new wounds, and she is silent all the while. Monica sits on the lid of the toilet, silent as well.

When Ellis finishes, she lowers the pouf into the water and watches the way bubbles spread out over its surface. Her eyes dart Monica’s way nervously. Monica offers a smile in return, but behind it, her mind is racing, trying to find the best way to proceed. She needs to finish stripping Elmer’s bed, and clean it (is it like cleaning up after a pet accident?); she doesn’t want to hurry Ellis out of the bath or leave her lonely, but she can’t ask whether Ellis _likes_ the bath. She won’t know the answer. For almost three hundred years, Elmer has readily gone along with almost anything Monica and Huey propose as though he has no opinions of his own. The thought horrifies Monica like it hasn’t in years.

The sound of rippling water pulls her out of her thoughts. Ellis’s hands are moving across the surface, pushing the bubbles around idly—but when she sees that she has drawn Monica’s attention, she freezes, her eyes frightened.

Monica swallows a sigh. The only way to figure out how to proceed is to guess.

“If you’re comfortable in there, you can stay in the bath for a little while,” she offers.

A timid nod from Ellis. Monica smiles back, warmly.

“Good. Are you going to be okay if I go wash the sheets? I’ll wash your clothes, too, so you have something to wear.” _Give her choices_ , Elmer had said. “Or I can stay with you, if you’d like. What would you prefer, Ellis?”

Her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug.

“Would it be okay if I go wash things? You can say no.”

Ellis takes a deep breath, her hands knit together under the surface of the water. “You can go wash,” she mumbles. “Mm-Monica… right?”

“That’s right.” For a moment, Monica feels something genuine in her own smile. “You can call for me if you need me. Or you can call for Elmer—he’s just across the hall. So is Huey, but you haven’t met him yet…”

She thinks again of how much Ellis’s scars will hurt Huey, and her heart twists. She doesn’t let it show. “We’re all going to protect you, Ellis,” she promises, and then stands. “I’ll leave the door open, and there are towels and a robe in the cupboard if you want to get out. …I’ll just be a few minutes.”

 

For all her skill in choosing who she wants to be from moment to moment, Monica has to admit to a sense of relief as she slips out of the bathroom and lets her wearying smile fall away from her face. She exhales, deliberately, and as her face settles into blankness her mind flits between possibilities. She could let herself feel horror and rage now, if she wants to; they will demand to be addressed eventually. But she sets that thought aside at once. She wants to do that when she has Huey to lean on.

It will be easiest to be businesslike, then.

She finishes stripping Elmer’s bed and throws the sheets and Ellis’s dirty clothes into the washing machine; as she acts, she is thinking what she will do next. Zosimos hasn’t had an accident in quite some time, but they still have some of the spray left. In any case, the first step is to pat down the wet spot. She takes an old towel out of the hall closet and does so; that will have to go in the wash, too. Then the pet cleaner; then… a towel compressed under heavy books, she supposes, though she can’t imagine it will work as well on a soft mattress as it does on a carpeted floor. She does it anyway, and then it’s time to check up on Ellis.

She walks down the hall to the bathroom, but finds that the door is more ajar than she left it. Her brow furrows in confusion.

“Ellis?”

“Monica… u-um…”

Ellis’s voice wavers from inside the bathroom. Monica pushes the door open, paranoid without knowing what there is to fear—

And then she gives a quiet laugh at her own worry as she sees just what snuck into the bathroom while she was occupied.

“Zoe,” she says with a reproachful smile.

Perched on top of the toilet tank, the cat looks her way. “Maow,” he remarks, and then returns to watching Ellis. Ellis is watching him, too, confusion in her eyes.

“Zoe?” she asks Monica.

“Yes. Our cat. He was in the living room when you got here, fast asleep—remember?” Though he’d looked more like a furry black ball than anything else at that point. It’s not too surprising that Ellis didn’t make the connection, especially if—and Monica supposes this is all too possible—she’s never seen a cat before.

In any case, he’s awake now, and by the way he lowers his shoulders and wiggles his back end, eyes still locked on Ellis, he clearly has intentions of leaping onto the rim of the tub. Monica steps forward swiftly and scoops him up. “Absolutely not,” she says firmly. Ellis does not need to be stuck in a tub with a panicky, wet cat.

Zosimos is not particularly troubled by the interruption of his plans. He settles into Monica’s arms without struggling, and Ellis watches them all the while.

“You can pet him once you’re dry,” Monica says, scratching behind Zosimos’s ears. “He’s very soft.”

“Oh.” Ellis doesn’t seem to know what to do with the offer. She picks at a scab on her arm absently, and Monica notices she’s trembling a little.

“Ellis, you’re shivering. Are you cold?” She dips her fingers into the water and finds that it’s cooled off considerably. “Would you like to get out of the bath now?”

But Ellis shrinks in on herself, her eyes wary. “Okay,” she whispers, but she doesn’t look willing.

Monica tries again. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she says hesitantly, because it’s what Elmer would have said. “It’s up to you, Ellis.” Even that doesn’t relieve Ellis’s tension, though, and a long silence stretches between them, long enough for Zosimos to start squirming. Finally, Monica sighs.

“It’s okay if you don’t know what you want to do,” she says, “and if you do, whatever you want to do is okay, too. What’s important is that you’re… comfortable.”

Elmer would have said _happy_ , but Monica isn’t that optimistic. It’s too much pressure, to expect Ellis to be happy just yet. To expect her to understand and trust that there’s nothing here to be afraid of. They can show her, but it will take time to prove. In the meantime, she needs space to feel what comes naturally to her.

The little girl looks from Monica down to her own hands, which have wrinkled in the bathwater. She takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she mumbles, and gets to her feet.

“Want to get out?”

“Uh-huh,” Ellis says, her teeth chattering.

Monica tosses Zosimos out the door unceremoniously and grabs a towel from the cabinet so that Ellis can dry herself. But for a moment, all Ellis can do is squeeze the fabric between her hands, her eyes wide.

“Is something wrong?” Monica asks. “Do you need help?”

Ellis can’t take her eyes off the towel. “Is everything this… soft?” she asks in a whisper. “Like the bed?”

Of _course_ the towel is soft, something inside Monica answers impatiently; that’s what towels are meant to be, and what have those bastards been doing to this girl up until now? But out loud, she only speaks mildly. “Not everything, but we can give you lots of soft things if you like them.”

Ellis presses the towel to her chest and nods into it, holding it there for a long moment. Monica thinks she hears a choked sniffle. But then she begins to dry herself off, and Monica pulls her bathrobe out of the cabinet.

“This is really soft, too,” she explains as Ellis eyes her curiously. She finds a wistful smile coming to her face. “Probably the softest Huey could find. He got it for me.”

She unfolds the robe and helps Ellis guide her arms into the sleeves. They’re too long, so Monica rolls them up; then she folds the waist over the belt so that Ellis doesn’t trip over the hem.

“Um,” Ellis says hesitantly as Monica fiddles, “is Huey… nice?”

Monica’s hands still, and she looks into Ellis’s face. There’s something resigned in it, like she’s ready to hear a ‘no.’ Monica reassures her with a wry smile.

“He’ll be very nice to you,” she promises, and gives the belt around Ellis’s waist a gentle pat. “He isn’t nice to everyone, but I think he’s wonderful. Sometimes when the world is cruel to someone, they have to be mean back to survive. I learned that from Huey. That’s why I fell in love with him.”

Ellis’s brow furrows uncertainly. “Elmer s-said…” she starts, but though her lips move, she can’t seem to get any further words out.

Unable to guess what she might mean—Elmer says a _lot_ of things—all Monica says is, “I’m listening.”

Ellis takes a deep breath. “Elmer said that y—you two aren’t… like us, so… how…”

Like Elmer and Ellis—in other words, sacrificial gods for SAMPLE. Monica lowers her gaze. “There are other ways for people to be cruel,” she says. “Not just what we went through.”

“Oh…” Ellis wraps her arms around her own waist, holding the bathrobe close as though it will protect her. Monica wonders what she’s thinking, wonders if there’s any way to make her understand how unacceptable her childhood was and that the three of them will make sure she never has to suffer like that again—

And then Zosimos scratches at the bathroom door from the other side and lets out a demanding _mraow_ , and Monica decides to take refuge in what she is certain of.

“There goes Zoe again,” she tells Ellis. She opens the bathroom door and intercepts the cat before he can rush in. “There,” she says, scooping him up into her arms. “Are you anxious to meet Ellis? Is that why you’re being so rude?”

Zosimos blinks back silently. Monica crouches before Ellis. “Here, Ellis, you can pet him. He likes it if you scratch behind his ears, like this.”

She demonstrates, and Ellis reaches out a cautious hand to imitate her. As she makes contact, she lets out a gasp and her eyes widen. Her fingers sink into Zoe’s sleek black fur, and in a moment, the cat begins purring. Monica smiles.

“He likes you,” she says. “That sound means he’s happy.”

“Like smiling?” Ellis asks.

“Yes, like smiling.”

Zoe moves his head so that Ellis can scratch under his chin, and the girl’s eyes shine with concentration and awe. She keeps running her palm over Zoe’s soft fur like she can’t believe how soft he is. Like she can’t believe this level of goodness exists in the world.

Or—and Monica finds herself hoping for this—like she _can_ believe it, for the first time in her life.

*

An hour later, the smell of freshly baked brownies lures Elmer and Huey out of the bedroom at last. They head downstairs to discover Monica washing batter out of a bowl while Ellis sits on the couch, wrapped up in Monica’s bathrobe, her attention devoted with singular focus to petting the cat in her lap. For a moment, all Elmer can do is stare, not even thinking about the necessity of introducing Huey and Ellis because of how at peace Ellis looks. He feels a lightness in his chest as he watches her.

Huey’s attention, on the other hand, is pointed towards the kitchen half of the open floor plan. “Are we doing dessert only, or should I start the carbonara?” he asks his wife.

“If you could start the carbonara, that would be wonderful. Actually—”

She beckons for Huey to come to her and then speaks in an undertone for a moment. When she nods towards the knife block, Elmer can guess what she might be saying. He goes to Ellis, who has looked nervously up from Zosimos, and sits down next to her.

“Brownies, huh? More chocolate?” he asks her, grinning.

She turns her worried eyes away from Huey to answer him. “Yeah,” she mumbles. “I told Monica that I think I like it.”

“That’s great, Ellis, I’m so excited for you!” Elmer exclaims. “It took me at least two years to start figuring out what I liked, you must be way smarter than me.”

Her brow furrows. “I don’t really know…” she says. “I just want to have more chocolate, and you said that means maybe I like it…”

“Yep, that’s very possible!” He scratches behind Zoe’s ears, watching out of the corner of his eye as Huey piles garlic, mushrooms, ham, and the entire knife block onto their largest cutting board and slips into the study in order to use the knives out of Ellis’s sight. “If you change your mind later, you can say so. But in the meantime we’ll make sure we have lots of chocolate on hand for you.”

“Among other foods,” Monica says. “We’ll need to make sure she’s eating well.”

She’s more at home now than she was earlier. Whether that’s because she’s adjusted to Ellis’s presence or simply because a fondness for baking that has sustained her through several hundred years, Elmer isn’t sure. It’s good to see her using those skills for Ellis. She finishes rinsing brownie batter out of the bowl she used and comes to sit at the other end of the couch.

“We’ll need to go clothes shopping, too,” she says. “I don’t know whether you’ll want to come along, Ellis…”

Ellis looks back down at Zoe, and Elmer takes a guess. “Probably not.”

“I’ll go out tomorrow, then. Sullivan will have to wait another day or two.”

“Sullivan?” Elmer asks, cocking his head.

“Jessica Sullivan, a subordinate of Victor’s. We’ve been…” Monica seems to consider and discard several different options for what to say next. “…collaborating with the FBI in our investigation.”

“Ahh.”

Her smile goes a little funny when she says it, and she offers no further details. Elmer wonders whether she’s worried about the possibility of another argument or if she just doesn’t want to try to talk about the issue over Ellis’s head. Maybe both, he decides, and it’s as good a reason as any to change the subject. He looks back down at the little girl.

“I see you’ve made a new friend, Ellis,” he says, scritching Zoe’s chin. The cat is decidedly still asleep but lifts his head to allow the caress. “When he’s awake, we’ll have to get out the laser pointer and let you play with him.”

She looks to him questioningly, having no idea what that is. He grins and snickers.

“You’ll see. It’s hilarious.”

_Maybe it’ll make you smile_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t feel the need to say it out loud. It’s funny, actually—funny in the weird way—but all the urgency, all the outright _panic_ he’d been feeling about her potential to smile, has faded away. Is it just because he’s not facing such a strict time limit? Because Ellis is already, just a few short hours after arriving, so nearly at ease?

Because Huey and Monica bring _him_ something like happiness, and he trusts their ability to do the same for her?

The reason doesn’t matter.

It’s just really nice to be home.

Huey returns to the kitchen then, ingredients chopped and whatever knife or knives he used to do so safely concealed in the knife block once more. “Should I start sautéing these?” he asks.

Elmer and Monica exchange a glance.

“You should not,” Monica says crisply, standing. “I’ll take care of it.”

Elmer grins. “C’mon, Huey, there’s shy and then there’s just rude.’

The accusation is spot-on; he can tell because Huey doesn’t even bother to deflect it, only glances away with his lips pressed together in embarrassment. Elmer watches him inhale and exhale quietly. As he crosses from kitchen to living room, Monica touches his hand lightly in passing, which seems to steel him a little. He comes to stand before Ellis and gazes down at her.

“Your name’s Ellis, right? I’m Huey Laforet.”

It’s almost enough to make Elmer snicker. Huey is awkward, a little too stiff, feet planted a little too deliberately into the floor. He’s not very good at unguarded sincerity in situations like these, and never has been; but he’s making an effort instead of wearing an empty smile, and Elmer appreciates that as much as he appreciated Monica’s hostess face earlier. It’s just so _him_ that it makes him want to laugh.

He swallows it, though, because Ellis needs guidance. She has no idea what to do with the hand that Huey has stuck out in her direction.

“Ready for the first handshake of your life, Ellis?” Elmer asks.

Huey hurriedly withdraws his hand. “Sorry, I didn’t think—”

“Don’t worry about it!” Elmer waves away his embarrassment and then turns back to Ellis. “You might’ve seen people do this before. It’s something you do when you meet someone. You take their hand and give it a shake. Like this!” He holds out his hand to Huey, and Huey obligingly shakes it. Ellis watches, silent and nonplussed. When Elmer lowers her hand again, she looks his way.

“Do I… have to meet a lot of people?” she asks. The look on her face isn’t quite dread, but it’s definitely in that category.

Elmer shakes his head, grinning. “Nah, we can keep things pretty quiet for you. Besides, not a lot of people try to get a handshake out of a nine-year-old. Huey just doesn’t know how to deal with kids, hahaha—”

That earns him a sharp glare from Huey. The intensity in his eyes fails to hide the flush in his cheeks. “It’s not as though I have many chances to practice.”

“Yeah, but you could at least learn from TV and stuff—”

“Elmer,” comes Monica’s voice to rein him in. Looking between her and Huey, Elmer twigs to the fact that Huey’s self-consciousness about this is genuine and acute, and that it’s time to back off. He wants to do things right for Ellis. And Elmer appreciates that.

So he waves his hand again and reassures them both, “I’m just teasing.” His nose is still crinkled with a grin, though, and for some reason he almost feels like laughing. Not _at_ Huey, but at the same time at him, and at Monica too—at the fact that they’re the same as ever and things are still _right_ here.

Ellis tugs at his sleeve, and he turns his attention toward her. She leans in as close as she can without dislodging Zoe, but seems hesitant to start speaking. Still shy of Huey, maybe? Huey seems to think so, at least; he sends her a flitting smile before heading over to help Monica in the kitchen.

Elmer sends a kind look Ellis’s way. “What’s up, kiddo?”

“Elmer, you’re different here. From… how you were… back there.”

“Yeah?” She’s probably not wrong. He feels different. “Good-different, bad-different, can’t-tell-different?”

She considers the question carefully. “If I want it to keep happening, that means good?”

“A lot of the time, yep.”

She nods slowly, and then again more firmly. “I think it’s that,” she says, and Elmer hears something approaching confidence in her voice. He feels light in his chest again and grins.

“Good,” he says. “I think you’re good-different here too, Ellis. What do you think?”

Ellis looks down at Zoe, then over at Monica, at Huey pulling the brownies out of the oven. She rubs the soft terrycloth of the bathroom with one hand and Zosimos’s fur with the other. When she looks back at Elmer, there may not be a smile on her face, exactly, but there’s a light of hesitant wonder.

“Yeah,” she says, and Elmer thinks the smile he sends her in return just might be a real one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This... is the warm and fuzzy sort of place where Lemony Snicket would advise you to stop reading, isn't it?


	7. Chapter 6

**The next morning**

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” comes Elmer’s cheerful voice when Huey cones down to the kitchen at 10:15. “I was trying to guess whether you or Ellis would get up first.”

Huey disregards Elmer’s playful teasing. “How is she doing?”

“Still fast asleep on the air mattress in the study. Zoe’s in bed with her.” Elmer grins. “Monica might get back before she wakes up.”

Huey barely stirred when Monica left to buy Ellis some new clothes, kissing him gently on her way out the door. He’d been exhausted. He’s been exhausted all month, but something has flipped a switch in his brain, and overnight he was able to get some of the rest he’s so desperately needed.

As he pours himself a cup of coffee, Huey looks at that “something” out of the corner of his eye.

Elmer looks… normal. Normal for him, at least. He’s grinning about nothing in particular, and it doesn’t seem strained like it had yesterday. He catches Huey looking and pokes the corners of his own lips in a prompt to smile. Huey answers with a roll of his eyes, but the silent exchange makes his heart turn over. He almost _could_ smile at the familiarity of it.

Before he can decide whether to give Elmer what he wants, though, Elmer speaks. “Oh, I meant to ask—Monica said something you guys working with the FBI yesterday?”

Huey snorts and explains the arrangement in brief, though he leaves out that the main purpose of Victor’s scheme is to keep the two of them from going after SAMPLE on their own. “It’s a lot of busywork,” is all he says in that particular vein.

 “But you were making progress?”

“Some,” Huey shrugs. “We got our hands on some of their archives when we took out that one branch, apparently, so some of that was new information for the FBI.”

Elmer nods. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“They said there’d been investigation into the cult recently,” Elmer says, serious even though his face is still smiling. “I figured you guys had to have something to do with it. I was pretty scared for you, actually, but that was just about when I had to get Ellis out of there anyway, and—wow, that was like thirty-six hours ago. Weird. Time is weird.”

He speaks lightly, unconcernedly, but there’s a hint of tension in his eyes. Huey wonders if he’s aware of it, or aware that he’s babbling. He brings his coffee and joins Elmer on the couch, weighing the question he wants to ask in his mind.

But Elmer is perceptive at the least convenient times; he notices Huey’s gravity. “Hm?”

He might as well ask outright, then: “What was it like, being with them?”

Elmer’s smile falters a little. His eyes leave Huey’s, and he gives the question serious thought. “You know, I don’t think I liked it,” he confesses. But then his brow wrinkles. “I don’t know. It’s strange. I know what they’re doing is evil, I’ve known that for a long time now. Not when they were doing it to me, ’cause it was all I knew back then, but everyone at the church made sure I knew I didn’t deserve all of that. That my family had no right to do that. And that makes sense! ’Cause like, kids’ smiles are so wonderful. They deserve to be able to wear carefree smiles. They deserve to be protected for as long as grown-ups can protect them. So it’s not good for grown-ups to hurt kids. What SAMPLE is doing is bad. I get that, I really do.”

He looks down at his hands, and Huey waits for the “but.”

Elmer takes a deep breath and continues. “I just… get stuck, though. When I think about them. Because they deserve to be happy too, don’t they?” He glances at Huey, and Huey doesn’t manage to make his face blank in time. Elmer snickers wryly. “You don’t think so. That’s fine. That’s probably _right_ , even, considering what they’ve done. What they keep doing. But I _have_ to think so. Right? Isn’t that the way I do things?”

“Do you want it to be?” Huey asks carefully.

“I dunno, that’s why I’m asking.”

But Huey has no advice to offer—nothing that’s suited to Elmer, at least. What Huey wants is for every last member of the cult to die, and if they suffer in the process, all the better. He can’t imagine that Elmer would feel that way about anyone.

At his silence, Elmer sighs. “It would be nice to not have to think anything about them. I start feeling weird again when I do. Being home makes me feel a little more normal, but…”

“We can change the subject,” Huey offers.

“Yeah…”

“I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“It’s okay! I understand why you’re curious!” Elmer’s pep returns, and this time Huey can’t tell how much of it might be desperately faked and how much comes naturally. Elmer cracks his knuckles. “Y’want pancakes for breakfast? I was thinking of making some for Ellis.”

Huey shrugs and lifts his mug. “This is enough for me for now, but you can make pancakes if you think she’ll like them.”

It’s poor phrasing; Elmer’s brow furrows. “I have no idea whether she’ll like them,” he confesses. “We just have to keep trying stuff, I guess. D’you think it’s always this stressful to try to figure out what kids like and don’t like?”

“Probably not quite _this_ stressful,” Huey says, but his face grows pensive. “I suppose we do have a child now, don’t we?”

“Is that okay?” Elmer asks, peering at him.

Huey glances at him, and then away. He thinks for a long moment about what the most honest answer is.

“It’s what you need,” he says finally. “Right?”

Elmer gives a faint laugh. “Yeah,” he admits. “I wanna help her.”

“Then that’s what matters.”

“Are you sure? Everything’s gonna change… Like, do we need to move? I guess I’m fine with sleeping on the couch, but that’s not gonna be convenient forever…”

“We could convert the study into a bedroom for her.”

“You’d have to stop staying up so late.” Elmer’s smile is beginning to creep back up his face. “Are you sure you can handle th—”

The phone rings, interrupting the end of Elmer’s sentence.

Huey rolls his eyes at Elmer’s teasing (how nice it is, to roll his eyes at Elmer’s teasing again) and goes to the phone. He doesn’t really intend to answer it, just to check the number on the caller ID—until he recognizes it as Monica’s cell number.

“Monica?” he says, picking up the phone. “What’s up?”

“Oh, Huey.” There’s relief in her voice when she says his name, but then tension shines through. “I just got a call from Agent Sullivan—she’s on her way over there right now.”

Huey’s brow furrows. “Why?”

“Because Victor’s office was attacked first thing this morning and they stole documents about where the children we rescued have been placed.”

Huey’s heart lurches and he finds himself gripping the phone tightly. “It was SAMPLE?”

“Yes.”

Huey curses under his breath. Monica continues urgently.

“Sullivan wants us moved to a safehouse. She’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Is Ellis awake?”

“Not yet.”

“Have Elmer get her up. Sullivan wants to leave as soon as possible. I’ll be home in fifteen. Can you start packing?”

“Okay.” Huey takes a deep breath to force his head to stop spinning. “Be careful coming home.”

“I will,” Monica promises, tenderness in her voice. “See you soon.”

Elmer looks to Huey for an explanation as he puts the phone down, and Huey tersely brings him up to speed. “I’m going to pack,” he says. “Can you wake Ellis up?”

Elmer hesitates. “I told her she could sleep until she woke up on her own…”

Huey tries, with limited success, not to think about how many times the girl must have been ripped from slumber so that she could be tortured. Out loud, all he says is, “Elmer, this is urgent.”

“I know.” Elmer sighs. “Can you do me a favor, though? I can tell you’re tense right now, can you maybe tone that down? For Ellis?”

Huey takes a deep breath. “I’ll try.”

“Thanks!” Either Elmer is following his own advice or he isn’t scared to begin with; he sends Huey a grin. “I’ll go get her, then. Can you throw some stuff in a bag for me? I kinda left my suitcase at her house.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Elmer heads into the study and Huey makes his way upstairs. He tries to focus _only_ on the packing. He has to. He doesn’t have enough information to figure out anything about the attack on Victor’s office, let alone to do anything about it. His mind keeps niggling at the subject anyway.

 

By the time he’s done packing, Elmer has Ellis set up where she’d been last night: in the corner of the couch, Zosimos slouched over her lap. He waves as Huey sets the suitcases by the door. “Hey! Ellis, can you say good morning to Huey?”

She looks up from the cat for a brief second, meeting Huey’s eyes, but she doesn’t say anything. Elmer doesn’t criticize her.

“I let her know we’re gonna head out as soon as Monica and Agent Sullivan get here,” he explains. “D’you think we’ll be able to stop for breakfast somewhere?”

“I have no idea,” Huey answers honestly.

“Do we have any snacks for her?”

“I can make a peanut butter sandwich?”

“That sounds great. Thanks, Huey.”

Huey gets out the bread and peanut butter, but before he can begin preparing the sandwich, he hears the garage door open. Monica’s home, thank god. But—

“Ellis?” Elmer says. The girl’s demeanor has changed; she looks like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible, her eyes wide and her shoulders pulled in on herself. Startled, Huey puts the knife down and moves towards her, but Elmer gestures for him to hang back.

“What’s going on?”

Elmer shakes his head, too focused on Ellis to answer. “Ellis. Hey, kiddo, it’s okay. That’s just Monica. Okay? It’s just Monica coming home.”

Ellis mumbles something that Huey can’t hear.

“I know,” Elmer says. “If it comes to that, I promise. But you’re safe right now. Okay?”

“You promised…”

“I know. Just trust me, Ellis, c’mon, Monica will be in in just a second.” Elmer glances towards Huey. “Huey, can you get Monica to hurry?”

Huey heads for the garage entrance without question. He finds Monica getting out of the car; she nods towards the driveway as he approaches.

“Sullivan’s here,” she says.

A grimace tightens Huey’s face as he looks at the black car. Of course everything would be happening at once. “She’s going to have to wait,” he says. “Ellis is upset.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I think the garage door scared her. Go in and show her it’s you, I’ll talk to Sullivan.”

“Okay.”

She drinks in the sight of his face for only a second before heading inside. Huey hurries to get between Sullivan and the front door.

“Good morning, Agent Sullivan.”

“I’m not sure it is,” she retorts, her face grim. “Are you all ready to go?”

Huey shakes his head. “Monica just got home, and Ellis… needs a minute.”

“Ellis,” Sullivan says. “That’s the girl.”

“Yes.”

“How is she?”

“Fragile,” Huey answers bluntly. “The garage door panicked her.”

Sullivan winces, her normally cool expression replaced with a pain one. “I guess I can’t blame her for being traumatized.”

Huey answers with a tight smile.

“She knows we’re leaving?”

“Elmer told her that much. I doubt he explained the attack on Victor’s offices, though.”

“That makes sense.” Sullivan narrows her eyes. “Speaking of Elmer, how long have the two of you known he was staying with a branch of the cult? It doesn’t seem like something that would just slip your minds.”

Huey opens his mouth to protest that that hardly matters right now, but the door unlatches behind him and he turns around instead.

“You can come in,” Monica says. “Calmly, if you please, and I think Ellis would appreciate a little space.”

“Noted.”

Sullivan sends Huey a swift look as if to warn him that she won’t forget the question she just asked, but then she makes her face blank as she follows Huey and Monica inside. Elmer, Ellis, and Zosimos are right where Huey left them. Ellis stares down at the cat, petting it determinedly rather than looking up to greet Sullivan. Elmer, on the other hand, sends a grin their way.

“Hi, you must be Agent Sullivan! I’m Elmer C. Albatross. D’you mind if I shake your hand later?”

“…That’s fine,” Sullivan says, and no more than that. Huey sends Monica a wry glance. It seems that even the cool, collected Agent Sullivan falters a little when faced with two victims of years of brutal torture.

But Elmer is—as Elmer _often_ is—unaffected by the tension in the room, and maybe that’s what gives Sullivan pause more than anything else.

“Did you want something to eat before we head out?” he offers. “I bet Monica could scramble some eggs up for you if you’d like!”

Sullivan shakes her head. “I’d like to get going as soon as possible. If the four of you are packed—”

And that’s when the back door slams off its hinges.

An enormous man towers into view, resembling nothing so much as a gorilla. Behind him, three men and a woman proceed into the house. They all have two things in common: clothing of mottled red and black, and smiles of eerie peace on their faces.

A gunshot rings out from beside Huey before he’s fully processed what he’s seeing. It hits the giant man square in the jaw, but he hardly even flinches. His eyes rove the living room and settle on Ellis and Elmer. They’re still on the couch, frozen in terror. The giant’s smile changes into one of satisfaction, and a jolt of adrenaline shoots through Huey’s body.

“ _Elmer_ ,” he shouts, “get her upstairs!”

Elmer gasps as if returning to himself, grabs Ellis in his arms, and bolts out of the living room. The SAMPLE members try to follow, but Sullivan fires on them again and Monica has her stiletto out. The woman goes down with a shot to the head, and one of the men takes a stab to the throat. The woman stays down. The man gets back up.

“They won’t stay down until they’re dead!” Sullivan shouts, and fires again, this time aiming for the gorilla-like man. The bullet hits his shoulder, spraying blood against the wall. He doesn’t even twitch, his smile unwavering as he heads for the stairs. Huey snatches a poker from beside the fireplace and in a swift movement drives it into the man’s eye with all his might. He feels the crunch of bone, but the man’s smile remains and so he yanks it out again and goes for the other eye as well. That slows him. The giant takes another few shambling steps forward, hands outstretched for guidance or to reach for Huey, but Monica is faster. She darts in front of Huey and drives her dagger upwards into the gorilla’s throat with the grace of practiced motion, and his body stills at last.

With a firm kick, Monica dislodges the man from the end of the stiletto. “Guard the stairs!” she tells Huey as the man crumples. Huey retreats to the foot of the staircase, heartbeat pounding in his head and bloody poker held high. But somehow, they have the advantage. Sullivan is fast with her gun, shooting two of the remaining men in the head in as many seconds. Monica dispatches the third with her blade. As quickly as the commotion began, the room falls eerily silent again.

Trying to catch his breath, Huey looks around. Five corpses. All of them clad in red and black. He didn’t see Zosimos escape but he doesn’t appear to be in the room; he must’ve made it to safety. Everything is splattered with a deep red. Huey feels blood drip down the poker and onto his hand—

Wait.

The trickling sensation is traveling _up_ his hand, up the black metal of the poker—and before his brain can match new information to context, something grasps his right forearm. There is a resounding crunch as his bones snap, and he screams, pain flooding his senses. The poker falls from his hand with a metallic clang.

“Huey!”

The giant pulls himself back to his feet, tossing Huey aside easily in the process. “No—” Huey chokes out, trying to silence the pain muddling his thoughts and prickling his vision because all that matters is that they protect Ellis and Elmer—

With a furious cry, Monica leaps at the giant, her blade once more burying itself in his skull. He falters for only a second, but it’s long enough for Monica to dart under his arm and up the stairs in front of him.

Huey doesn’t see what happens next, but it’s obvious what she has done even if he hasn’t seen this since that terrible night on the ship. The giant’s body goes taut for a second. Then it begins to writhe and dry up and shrink, his feet curling out of existence first, then his legs, his torso, his arms; finally his head vanishes into Monica’s right hand and she catches her stiletto with her left as his clothes fall to the floor. Her attention is already on the other bodies. Sullivan has her gun trained on them as well, gaze flicking from one to the next nervously, but the corpses remain motionless. Their blood stays where it landed. The fight is truly over now.

Huey gets to his feet as his bones shift back into place, the process painful until it abruptly isn’t. Monica lowers her right arm at last, and their eyes meet. She rushes back down the stairs to be by his side.

“Huey, are you okay?”

Her voice is high with genuine fear. Huey gives his arm—now fully recovered—a little shake and holds it up. “I’m fine. Good as new.”

“Are you sure?” She takes his arm and pulls his sleeve back, running her hands over his unmarred skin. When she is satisfied that he is fine, she raises her eyes to look him in the face again. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to him sooner.”

“It’s fine,” he reassures her, touching her cheek lightly. She leans into it, but she’s tense. “What about you? Are you all right?” None of them have ever devoured someone before, and he has no idea what kind of effect it has on people.

But she only takes a quiet breath. “Yes, I’m fine,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

He traces his thumb over her cheekbone lightly. When a faint, familiar pink comes to her face, he breathes a little easier.

“I’m sure,” she promises him. “He isn’t pleasant, but it’s not hard to just… put him away. Like a mask I never have to wear. I’m certainly not going to dwell on what he’s done.”

Huey’s stomach turns at the thought of absorbing one of these cultist’s minds into his own. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

“No,” she agrees, “but—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sullivan breaks in, “but if you two are done reassuring each other that you are, in fact, still immortal, we should really get going.”

They look over at her. “You’re all right?” Huey asks, belatedly realizing that she’d been in more danger than either he or Monica was.

“I’m fine,” she says curtly.

“You fought well,” Monica says.

“So did you,” Sullivan answers, raising an assessing eyebrow. “I think I’ve been underestimating you.”

The corner of Monica’s mouth lifts. “I don’t mind,” she assures her. “You’re going to call Victor?”

“Yes, I’d better.”

“Tell him that one of the people they sent was immortal, and that I devoured him. He’ll have more questions after that; tell him I won’t answer them until I’ve had a chance to sort the information myself. I’ve learned something very interesting indeed.”

This last sentence she directs towards Huey, and he recognizes a dark anger in her face. “What is it?”

“I want to talk to Elmer about it.” She turns to climb the stairs, but Huey catches her hand.

“Wait. You’re covered in blood.”

She stops and looks down at herself as if noticing for the first time the blood that stains her right hand and covers her torso in an uneven splatter. None of it’s hers—if she’d been hurt in the fray, the wounds would be closed by now—but she’s still quite a sight, and not one that Ellis will want to see.

Reaching the same conclusion, Monica sighs. “I’ll wash up and change. Agent Sullivan, there’s a bathroom on this floor if you’d like to clean up as well.”

The agent waves an acknowledging hand, the other hand holding her phone to her ear.

Monica looks back at Huey. “Can you check on Elmer and Ellis while I clean up?”

He nods and follows her upstairs. There’s a soft weeping coming from behind Elmer’s closed door; Huey knocks before he tries to enter, and a sharp gasp cuts the weeping short.

“Elmer? Ellis? It’s Huey,” he says. “We took care of them.”

“Oh! Great!” comes Elmer’s voice from beyond the door. It sounds reedy and distracted, not like him. “See, Ellis, I told you we’d keep you safe. Good. Lemme get the door.”

There’s a sound of something heavy being moved. A moment later, the door opens. Elmer standing there, his armchair pulled away from the door so that it can open. A shivering lump of blankets sits on the bed, Ellis at its center. Her eyes are tearstained and uncertain.

Elmer grins in a way that’s all muscles and teeth, no emotion. “I told Ellis you and Monica would be fine and there’d be nothing to worry about. …Um, is Agent Sullivan…?”

“She’s fine. She’s updating Victor before we move out. Monica’s cleaning up a bit and then she has something she wants to ask you about.” Huey reaches for Elmer’s arm, but Elmer flinches away at the slightest contact. Huey lowers his hand again. “How are you two?”

“No physical damage, at least.” Elmer glances over his shoulder at Ellis. “Thanks for shouting, I dunno why I froze up like that.”

Huey could offer a guess, but it wouldn’t be helpful right now. Instead he only says, “I’m glad you got away.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Oh, Zoe’s under the bed, by the way. I tried to get him to come out and hang out with Ellis but he was having none of it. He’s pretty spooked.”

“So are you,” Huey notes.

Elmer looks back at Ellis again, misunderstanding Huey’s comment for a plural ‘you’ rather than singular. “Yeah, she’s really shaken. I feel really dumb. I should’ve realized they’d send someone after her, but I don’t know how they found us so quickly… D’you think Victor had our address in his office?”

“That’s not it.”

Monica’s voice comes crisply from behind Huey, and he turns to see that she has changed and washed her hands clean. She looks as she normally does. Her look of hard determination, too, is familiar as she eyes Elmer.

“Were you aware there were Immortals in the cult?” she asks. Her voice is blunt, but quiet enough to keep the conversation between the three of them without troubling Ellis.

His brow furrows—but with concern, Huey thinks, not confusion. Sure enough, Elmer sighs before answering.

“I did wonder about that,” he says. “I think I said this, but they didn’t seem surprised by me at all. I never heard anything directly, though. Did they send one?”

“Yes.” Monica flexes her right hand at her side. “I took care of him.”

“Ah. Good.” Elmer tilts his head. “What does that have to do with how they found us?”

Monica lifts her chin. When she speaks, her voice is cold with anger.

“They knew where to find us because Fermet told them.”

“…Fermet?” For a moment, Huey isn’t even _angry_ : the emotions that creep over his skin are cold shock and confusion. His voice comes out sounding strangely distant. “Why is he involved? Is he with SAMPLE?”

“Apparently,” Monica answers. He can hear disgust in her voice. “He’s—”

“He’s their ‘V,’ isn’t he?” Elmer’s voice is rueful as he interrupts. “For ‘Viralesque.’”

Huey stares at him. “You knew?”

“I wouldn’t say _knew_. It was just a hunch. Like, maybe they knew about Immortals because one of us was involved, and he seemed like a likely guess, right?” Elmer looks away, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s a little blatant for him, but he made it plenty clear that he really likes hurting people, so it’s kind of up his alley. And going by an initial would be a sneaky way to get around the name rules. So that’s what I was thinking.”

“…I see.” The information calls for more than a chilly _I see_ , but the way Huey’s body trembles with tension isn’t lining up with the steady progression of his thoughts from one necessary conclusion to the next. He hasn’t thought of Fermet in centuries; the three of them knew that he was responsible for the Dormentaire presence in Lotto Valentino, for the plays that laid bare Huey’s and Monica’s childhoods. He had made it clear—once they arrived on the shores of the New World—that he had done so for his own sadistic amusement. But they haven’t heard from him since, not after that time at the docks when Elmer had chased him off simply by being himself—

All at once, Huey’s rage crashes into him, sharp and fiery. “He’s after Elmer,” he says, voice hard with fury.

Monica nods agreement to his conclusion, but Elmer is confused. “Me?”

“He hates you,” Huey tells him, and then looks at Monica. “Did he revive the cult on his own? Just for this?”

Monica shrugs. “Max doesn’t—didn’t—know the answer to that, but I think it’s likely. I’d have to look over some of what we know again and compare his perception of—”

“I don’t want you digging through his memories,” Huey says sharply.

“But they’re very…”

She pauses at the sound of Sullivan coming up the stairs. The FBI agent eyes the three Immortals and then peers over their shoulders at Ellis; then she speaks to Monica directly.

“Agent Talbot wants to talk to you,” she says, “and then we need to get going.”

*

Monica accepts the phone from Sullivan and explains patiently but stubbornly that she will not discuss anything she learned from the SAMPLE member until she has time to process it herself; Huey makes sure he’s packed everything and then goes to wait downstairs.

Elmer just sits with Ellis.

She seems so far away. She doesn’t speak. She’s in tears. She might cry a little less, he thinks, if only he’d carry out his end of the deal he made with her, but he keeps waffling. Keeps dodging. It’s not fair to her, and it’s not like him, but he just doesn’t want to do it.

“You’re still safe,” he promises Ellis in a soothing voice. “Okay? We’re even going to go somewhere called a safehouse, and then you’ll be even safer.”

“It won’t work,” Ellis mumbles, clutching the quilt more tightly around her. “Nothing… nothing’s going to work. I’m supposed to hurt. That’s what… I’m for.” She closes her eyes, and the movement sends fresh tears spilling over her cheeks. “I d-don’t want to hurt anymore, Elmer.”

“I won’t let them hurt you.”

But she shakes her head. “I hurt in… my heart. In my head. Please…”

Elmer witnesses her distress and his heart hurts, too. He doesn’t want her to hurt anymore either. And it isn’t like he can promise that she’ll never have to suffer. He’s never attempted to promise that much. But he had promised _safety_ and now he’s questioning his ability to provide that. She’ll only grow tired if they have to keep running. That openness he saw yesterday, her wonder at learning that she has the potential to _like things_ and _feel comfortable_ —what if that’s as good as it gets for her?

If that’s the case, then shouldn’t he do what he knows will help her smile?

A low chirp startles him out of his circling thoughts. Zoe has emerged from under the bed at last and leaps up to sit between Elmer and Ellis. Something like relief quivers in Elmer’s chest—relief that Zoe can get over his fright, that things can change and improve—but it’s nothing compared to Ellis’s reaction. For a long moment, she stares at the cat.

Then she opens her mouth wide and wails.

Elmer is baffled by the depth of her reaction until she reaches out and pulls Zoe close to herself. The cat, usually resistant to being picked up so suddenly, tolerates her embrace and the way she strokes the fur on his side with her hand. She cries into his small black body, and Elmer thinks he has a guess about what she’s feeling.

“I w—I wa—n—”

It’s too much for her to get out. Elmer wraps one arm around her shoulder lightly.

“You want to keep petting him, right?”

With a long sniffle, Ellis nods her head against Zoe’s fur. Elmer gives her a little squeeze.

“Then I promise, I’ll protect you so you can keep doing that for as long as possible.”

 

The safehouse is about twenty minutes into the city. Elmer, Ellis, and Zoe (reluctantly packed into his carrier) ride with Sullivan; Monica and Huey follow behind in their car. The ride is pretty silent. Elmer finds himself looking out the rear window often, reassuring himself over and over that his friends are still behind them. Of course they are. Everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine. He should be smiling. Has he smiled at all, since the attack from SAMPLE? He searches his memory and he can’t tell.

When they reach the safehouse, he breathes more easily; more easily still when Huey gets out of the car and asks for his help with the suitcases. He asks Ellis to sit tight for a minute while Sullivan gets the house unlocked and then goes to help. His hand brushes over Huey’s as they offload the suitcases, and there’s a twinge of apprehension, but a moment later it is replaced with something calmer than that.

Monica comes up behind them and reaches for the last suitcase. “Are you all right?” she asks in a quiet voice.

Normally the answer would be easy; nothing troubles _him_. He only needs to worry about others who might be hurting or sad, like Ellis. But somehow the answer doesn’t come easily now.

“I don’t know,” he confesses.

“Are you scared?”

That question is Huey’s, blunt and yet careful at the same time.

Elmer swallows. “I mean… I’m worried for Ellis. Especially after that attack.”

“But what about for yourself?” Huey insists. His eyes are feverish with his concern.

“No, I’m not—” That’s not how he _works_. Right? “I’m fine, I’m… fine.”

“Elmer, you’re _not_ ,” Monica says. “They hurt you.”

He shakes his head. “I told you, they weren’t hurting me. If they’d hurt me, I would’ve left, like I promised—”

“That’s not what we mean,” Huey says. He searches Elmer’s face and then sighs. “You know how some people don’t have a sense of pain?”

Elmer cocks his head. “Sure? But I do—”

“I know you do. Physically, you do. But the danger in analgesia is that these people wind up hurting themselves without realizing it. They touch something hot or they scrape their leg and the distress signals don’t get to their brain, so they don’t know to do something about it. They don’t know they need to get away.” Huey looks straight at Elmer. “That’s what you’ve been doing to yourself emotionally for the past month.”

Elmer can’t hold Huey’s gaze any longer. He looks away, his heart thumping oddly in his chest. He feels shaky again, but he tries to smile. “That’s not what it was,” he says. “That’s not—what I was there for, I wasn’t staying for me. I was just focused on Ellis—”

“Elmer.” Huey reaches for Elmer’s shoulder and Elmer’s body flinches, contracting into itself and trying to be smaller. Blood rushes in his ears and he can’t understand why. He shouldn’t be afraid of Huey’s touch. He hasn’t been afraid of Huey’s touch, of _anyone’s_ touch, in years. Centuries.

Oh.

Elmer’s shoulders sag and he doesn’t protest again. Instead of his shoulder, Huey reaches for Elmer’s hand, and his touch is warm.

“Elmer?” Monica says, her voice quiet. “You’re safe now. We promise.”

It’s exactly what he told Ellis. The irony almost makes him chuckle, but instead his heart wrenches as he wonders if he looks as scared as she did.

Huey squeezes his hand. “We’re going to make sure you’re safe, together. We’re going to take care of you, and we’re going to take care of Ellis, too.”

“And we’re going to take care of SAMPLE.”

Monica mutters it, almost too quiet for Elmer to hear, but it would be hard to miss the cool, dangerous light in her eyes. Elmer tries to laugh. He would laugh here, normally.

“I feel like you just changed the meaning of ‘take care of’ there.”

“Do you still want to stop us?” Huey asks.

And Elmer doesn’t know the answer to that. If Huey’s right, if he’s feeling a pain he can’t understand, how can he trust his own senses?

Instead of trying to, he puts his trust in the way they fought to protect Ellis from the ones who tried to take her back.

“Can I just have you two promise me one thing?” he asks. Huey and Monica look at him, waiting. He knows why Huey lifts one ironic eyebrow; he knows what they think he’s going to ask. But maybe, maybe this is more important than anything he’s ever asked of them before. “Just… make sure you take care of yourselves, too.”

Huey gives a soft snort. (Oh, it’s genuine amusement; Elmer’s heart swells with relief, with affection.) He squeezes Elmer’s hand one more time. “I promise,” he says, voice tinged with irony, and then they bring Ellis inside.


	8. Chapter 7

Monica loves Huey, for many reasons; the fact that he knows her in all her duplicity and still trusts her is only one of them. Tonight, it is the one that helps her most. All she needed to do, back at the house, was ask, “Can you pack a…” and point briefly to her face, and he slipped a mask into the suitcase without questioning it. Without a word, he trusted that whatever she intended to do with it would meet with his approval.

It’s hardly fair, deceiving him like this, and the anger he will feel will be justified and the thought makes her stomach twist. But neither he nor Elmer would survive what Monica knows she must do.

It was natural enough for her to be restless all evening—to stand and pace abruptly, to have difficulty falling asleep. Natural, but false. Monica does not pace when she is thinking, and she never intended to sleep tonight. But the pretense, steadily maintained as they settled into the safehouse, means that when she sits up in bed at 1 a.m., Huey only half-wakes to question it.

“I just need a minute,” she lies. “There’s a lot on my mind.”

“You okay?” he asks, slurring a bit with sleep.

“Mmhmm. Just restless. Go back to sleep, okay? I’ll get out of bed so I don’t bother you.’

“Mm,” Huey agrees, and rolls back over. Monica rises from bed, as promised, and gazes out the window to wait for sleep to take him again. After a half-hour passes, she turns and breathes his name as quietly as she can.

“Huey?”

He doesn’t respond. He’s asleep.

Monica feels herself smile wistfully. He’s _beautiful_ like this, always; faint moonlight slips in over her shoulder and caresses his face, pale skin framed by dark hair. She thinks she could watch him forever.

And then, her treacherous mind warns her that this could be the last time she sees him, and her heart leaps into her throat with terror and longing. It takes an enormous effort not to call out to him again, loud enough to wake him this time; to confess her plan to him and in doing so abandon it, because she _knows_ he will never agree. And if he told her to stop, she knows she would obey him.

But she closes her eyes and gives her head a little shake.

She has to do this.

She cannot let this be the last time she sees Huey; so she’ll just have to make sure she returns.

Moving silently, she pulls out the mask from the drawer they hid it in; then her sweatshirt, and a pair of soft pants. She retrieves her stiletto and the car keys from atop the dresser. She vanishes into the bathroom to change out of her pajamas and then—without risking another glance Huey’s way—she slips down the stairs.

She is nearly to the front door when someone stage-whispers her name—well, almost that.

“Hey, Moni-Moni.”

Surprise gives way to resignation almost immediately. She looks towards the couch—she should have looked to begin with—and there she sees Elmer, pajama-clad but fully awake. He sits up as she looks at him, and she sighs.

“Shouldn’t you be looking after Ellis?” she chides him in a murmur.

“She’s fast asleep,” he answers. “So I thought I’d come see if I was right about why your smiles were weird all evening.”

She frowns. “I tried not to smile at all.”

“You always smile when you look at Huey, whether you mean to or not,” Elmer replies, grinning himself. “But your smiles kept going funny the second he looked away. I figured something was up.”

Monica winces. “Ah.”

He said he’d guessed what was on her mind, so she doesn’t really try to hide her mask, only holding it slightly behind her thigh.

“Are you waiting here to stop me?” she asks.

Elmer shakes his head. “I don’t think you’d let me. Would you?”

Monica shakes her head, too.

“Did you tell Huey?”

She shakes her head again.

Elmer gives a dry chuckle. “I thought so. He wouldn’t like this plan, huh? It would worry him.”

“I have to do this,” she insists, even knowing that Elmer isn’t trying to talk her out of it. It reminds her to fight the instinct to bend to what Huey would want. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“Good strategy!” Elmer says. He looks like he means it, despite his absurd grin. “If Huey gets angry, I’ll help you patch things up with him. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

Then Elmer’s face turns serious. He stands from the couch, approaches her, and puts his hands on her shoulders. “I just want you to promise me one thing in return.”

Monica tilts her head. “What?”

“Make sure that when you come back, you can still show me your smile. _Your own_ smile.”

“Ah.” Of course that’s how Elmer would phrase his concern. It makes Monica smile now, at the comfortable familiarity of her dear friend’s personality. She leans forward to rest her forehead against his. “I promise.”

“Good.” The smile comes back to Elmer’s face. “I’d say good luck, then, but I know you won’t need it.”

“I’ll take it anyway,” Monica answers, and she slips away from him and out the front door.

*

Lebreau Fermet Viralesque currently lives in a one-floor home only a few neighborhoods away from the Laforets.

Max, the man Monica had eaten, hadn’t known that until recently; he knew “Viralesque” through SAMPLE’s terrifyingly global main branch. Prior to last night, his interactions with Viralesque had primarily occurred wherever SAMPLE’s upper echelons were “worshiping” that particular week. But after Ellis’s escape, it seems that Viralesque had been all too ready to share Elmer C. Albatross’s address and offer a convenient base from which Max and the other cultists could launch their attack.

Almost as if he had been waiting to do so.

Monica doesn’t doubt for a second that he was. She can’t help but wonder just how deeply he is entwined in all of this—not just SAMPLE’s revival, but in their discovery of it. But that thought makes her stomach clench with violent resentment and anxiety, and she makes herself put it away. There’s no point in wondering it now. She fully intends to find out the answer from Fermet, more directly than any mortal could ever hope to achieve.

It’s 3 a.m. by the time she reaches his neighborhood. She parks a few houses away and puts on her mask before she leaves the car. Then she pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt. Behind the mask, she gives a twisted smile. She never could have guessed, back when she was fifteen, that the Mask Maker would someday take this form.

But she’s glad to have him now, and all the skills she built up for him: the instinct to blend into shadows, to walk as stealthily as possible. The late fall air is cold and the light from the quarter moon above is faint, but neither of those factors touch the Mask Maker’s confidence. She approaches Fermet’s home and wonders how best to enter. Test the doors first, perhaps; pick the lock if she can, and break a window if she can’t. She layers her own observation of the outside over the layout of the house in Max’s memories (he was quick-witted despite his bulk and despite the drug they all take to warp their perception of pain) and decides the bedroom is her best option if she can’t get in through the doors. The sound of breaking glass will wake him, no doubt, but—

As she watches, a light begins to glow from inside. The living room. A dark shape stands against the drawn curtains, waiting: he’s already awake.

She sighs behind the mask, resigning herself to what she half-expected. Someone else might resent him for so neatly predicting that one of them might come after him. Monica has no intention of wasting time on such an emotion. If he suspected that they would pursue him and chose not to flee, she is very interested in making him regret that decision.

But is he going to make her ring the doorbell, like some kind of farce? Does he think he can take advantage of the opening of the door to take her by surprise? He has no hope of surprising her; she will expect anything from him. She takes a deep breath to focus herself and proceeds up the walkway, stiletto ready in hand. She raises her left hand to try the door—

It opens before she can, and in less time than a gasp she yanks her body backwards from the right hand that shoots out. She spears his wrist on her knife, but Fermet doesn’t even hiss in pain.

“You’re masked, anyway,” he points out. The glee in his voice reveals the smile that mottled red and black strips of cloth conceal.

Monica twists the knife a little, wishing its design were a bit better suited for slicing, and then pushes with her whole body to force her way inside. Fermet doesn’t resist. He does take the chance to free his hand, though, and waves it about carelessly as his blood pulls its way off her blade, through the air, and back to his body.

“How nice to see you again, _Maribel_.”

“Monica Laforet,” she corrects him, chin raised proudly. She does not lower her blade.

Fermet receives her self-introduction with a puzzled tilt of his head. Then, comprehension: “You changed your name when you married. Was that before or after you drank?”

Instead of answering, she lunges forward, left hand outstretched to grasp at his bandages. He catches her hand, and the wrappings on his face shift with a patronizing smile. “Do you really think I’ll—hnkh!”

He chokes as Monica drives her stiletto into his lung; releases her hand, but crouches to kick her backwards. She winces as his foot connects with her stomach, and it’s all she can do to hold onto her knife.

“Really, Maribel,” he says as she catches her breath, eyes on him all the while. “We haven’t seen each other in three hundred years. Can’t we catch up a little? I really am curious about how you got around the name rules. I find them incredibly irritating, myself.”

“You won’t have the chance to use anything I might tell you,” she answers in the Mask Maker’s low, uncaring voice.

He snickers. “You think you’re going to kill me,” he guesses.

“I _am_ going to kill you.”

He shrugs. “Sorry, but I’m just not prepared for that right now. I wasn’t expecting that smile junkie to run off with the girl, so I’ve been playing things by ear for a few days. …How is he, by the way?”

“He’s been better,” Monica growls, her teeth bared behind her mask.

“Well! That’s welcome news. I was afraid that nothing in the world could get through his stupid, sick head. He didn’t even react to the Martins!” He gives an involuntary shudder, but then laughs. “But you say it got through to him after all. I’m so _glad_ to hear it. What about Huey? How’s he been?”

It’s an attempt to get under her skin; she knows it is. Rather than indulge it, Monica asks, “Have you been lurking here just to gloat?”

“No, no, not _just_ to gloat,” he assures her. He’s recovered from her last attack, and Monica sees his left hand inching towards a ceramic vase on the side table. She leaps forward again, knife at the ready; she doesn’t make contact but at least she prevents him from arming himself. He holds up his hands as if to protest his innocence—but his next words are anything but that. “It took no small effort to introduce you two to SAMPLE subtly, you know. And then before you could really dive into it, Victor swooped in to make sure you two didn’t get in over your heads, ruining my fun. You understand why I had to harass him a little, too.” He shrugs, his manner casual. “There’ve been a lot of unexpected developments, but I think I’ve handled them pretty well, don’t you?”

Monica doesn’t care. At all. “And now I’m here,” she says, the implied threat clear.

He answers with a sudden lunge forward. Monica dodges just in time, leaping onto the seat of the couch and then behind him to dodge his attack. It takes him by surprise. Before he can adjust his expectations, she swings her stiletto forward in a swift arc and slices up the back of his neck, piercing cloth and skin and scraping against bone. It isn’t an ideal attack—she wanted to pierce his skull and incapacitate him—but as he whirls away from the blade and the blood she spilled is sucked back into his body once more, the bandages wrapped tight around his face begin to slacken. _Progress_ , she thinks with grim satisfaction—and then something slams into her body, just below her ribcage. She realizes that it is a knife as her vision blurs and heat radiates out from the point of impact.

The breath she tries to inhale doesn’t quite feel right.

She tries to push Fermet away, but he only clicks his tongue as if disappointed.

“Monica Laforet,” he says, patronizing in the use of her proper name. “Did you leave poor Huey asleep in bed, blissfully unaware that he would wake up in a world without you? Did you tell yourself that of course you would survive to come home to him? What exquisite regret you must be feeling right now. If only I could give you time to wallow in it.”

He twists the knife in her body and pain chases after heat, but she refuses to quail—refuses to let out so much as a hiss of pain. She refuses to let her vision cloud. She demands competence from her immortal body, and strangely, it seems to obey her.

Pain, she realizes, does not need to be agony to her.

“Do you know,” Fermet continues, “how much joy I will find in calling him from your phone once I’ve eaten you? Do you think he’s already awake, worrying about you? Imagine his relief when he sees your name on the caller ID, and how I’ll shatter it.” Some of the wrappings have fallen away from the lower half of his face, revealing a predator’s smile. He uses his free hand—his right hand—to push Monica’s hood back from her head. Her heart pounds as she stands tense and frozen. “Don’t worry,” he promises, his voice all tenderness with an undercurrent of gleeful madness. “I’ll make sure to tell him whether your last thought is of him.”

It’s when he reaches for the leather cords that tie her mask into place that she moves.

She drives her stiletto upwards in a single, confident strike—a strike she has spent the last dozen-odd seconds planning instead of wasting attention on his gloating—and pierces through his throat into his brain. For the first time, he reacts to the blow: an involuntary twitch, a sudden slackness of his muscles.

“Ah,” he says quietly, or maybe it’s just a gasp. With her left hand, Monica pries his knife out of her chest at last. Her body goes to work reknitting itself at once, but that hardly matters. She grabs him by the back of his neck and holds him on her blade.

“Did you think that gloating over the pain you’ve caused my husband and my friend would _inhibit_ my resolve?’ she asks, her voice gravelly and uneven. Blood bubbles in the back of her throat as she speaks, and some of it dribbles out of the corner of her mouth; but soon enough, it retreats back to where it belongs. Her next words are as clear as obsidian. “Did you think I would let myself be incapacitated by fear like I was as a child? In front of someone like _you_? Do you think I’m that stupid?” He twitches, his arms making an uncoordinated attempt to fight her off. But there’s no strength in them, or in the rest of his body. She’s surprised his legs are still holding him up at all.

Behind her mask, she smiles the cruelly triumphant smile of the Mask Maker. “I’m _not_ stupid enough to give you the time to wallow in your regret.”

With her left hand, she rakes at the strips of cloth that protect Fermet’s head from her. He tries once more to pull free, but his limbs move feebly. Red and black slide away from his face to settle around his shoulders.

Monica shifts her grip on her knife from her right hand to her left; then she places her right hand on his head and—for the second time in twenty-four hours—thinks, _I wish to eat_.

 

 

*

“And you just let her go?”

Huey had woken to an empty bed and a sick sense of premonition in the pit of his stomach. When he emerged from the bedroom, hoping he was wrong—hoping to find his wife in the kitchen or living room of this borrowed house—Elmer instead confirmed the conclusion his mind had leapt to.

He loves Elmer, but sometimes his unflappable calm is infuriating. Now is one of those times.

“I don’t really think there’s anything I could’ve done to stop her,” Elmer says, contemplative rather than concerned. Then he sends a peppy grin Huey’s way. “Besides, she promised me she’d come back with her own smile on. She’s no pushover, Huey. I bet she’ll be fine.”

“You _bet_?” He seizes Elmer by the collar of his ridiculous pajamas, only to make a noise of frustration and release him when he feels him flinch. It’s not Elmer he wants to grab, anyway, but Monica _isn’t here_. She’s gone off to find Fermet like he’s not as dangerous to her as she could be to him. Huey’s throat closes but he forces words out anyway. “She lied to me, she said she just—needed to get out of bed for a bit—”

“I think she was worried you’d stop her.”

“Of course I would have stopped her!” Huey snaps. He would have stopped her just like he stopped her when she got it into her damn head to turn herself in to the Dormentaires, three centuries ago. “She shouldn’t—”

“Hang on.” Elmer holds up a hand suddenly, his gaze turned towards the bedroom. After a silent moment, Huey hears it too. “Is that your…?”

Huey swears and makes a dash for the bedroom, from where he can hear his ringtone playing. He doesn’t quite make it; by the time he has the phone in hand, it’s stopped ringing and instead informs him that he has a missed call from Monica’s cell. Swearing again under his breath, he hits the callback button.

It’s her, he tells himself as the phone rings once, twice; he remembers how Fermet gloated at the docks, how clearly he enjoyed it, but this _has_ to be her calling. A click indicates that the call has been answered. “ _Monica_ —” he says, his voice breaking, trying to forestall any other possibility by the sheer force of his desperation.

There’s a shaky exhalation from the other end of the line, and then, in a voice that’s just as shaky: “Huey… oh…”

It’s her. Relief steals all the strength from Huey’s limbs at once, and he feels for the bed with one hand before taking a seat on it. His other hand trembles around the phone. “Monica, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Her voice is reedy and distressed, but it’s hers. “I’m fine. It’s over.”

Dread twists his heart. “Did you…”

“Yes.”

“Monica…” Huey shakes his head numbly. Nausea and emotion rise in his throat together. “You shouldn’t have had to do that. You already ate that other bastard. I should’ve been the one to—”

She lets out a laugh that doesn’t sound joyful. “Trust me, Huey, you don’t want this. He’s… a lot. There’s more of him than there was of Max to begin with because he’s so much older, but he’s just…” Another stuttering sigh from her end. “You don’t want this inside of you, Huey.”

She sounds brittle and exhausted and Huey has to fight panic. “I don’t want him inside of _you_ , either!”

“No, I can handle it. He’s not as easy to put away as Max was but I can do it. You wouldn’t be able to, you’re already so permeable…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Do you really not know?” she asks, and her voice is indulgent and tender and arch and too sincere for Huey to answer with a lie. He knows he can’t compartmentalize like she can, can’t shut off pieces of what he knows without destroying himself completely.

So, instead: “I don’t want this to hurt you,” he says, almost pleading.

“It won’t. I promise. Hearing your voice… It helps. A lot.”

“Then I’ll keep talking.”

She laughs quietly. “Go ahead,” she says, an ache in her voice.

“Monica…” He wants to comfort her, but the words that come to mind most easily are the ones that were rattling around in his head before he called. “Monica, he’s tried to kill you before and that’s _after_ he did his best to ruin our lives. What was I going to do if he’d—if—”

Terror won’t let him finish the sentence. Monica answers before he has to.

“I told myself I wouldn’t let that happen.”

He snorts miserably. “You told Elmer, too.”

“I didn’t go out of my way to do so!” she insists, a wince in her voice. “He caught me sneaking out. Huey, I wanted to say goodbye to you, but I knew you wouldn’t have let me go…”

“Of course I wouldn’t have,” he says, but there’s less venom in it than when he swore the same to Elmer a few minutes ago. Relief has exhausted him. He gathers the duvet cover in his fist and then lays it flat again. “Monica, you shouldn’t have done this on your own. We could have gone after him together and cornered him.”

“I didn’t want to endanger you.”

“ _You_ being in danger _is_ endangering me. We’re supposed to be one, aren’t we? Elmer, too. All three of us.” He sighs. “We need to start acting like it again. We need to stop… being so stubborn and support each other instead.”

“Stop being stubborn? _Us_?”

He can hear her sarcastic amusement in her voice, and he knows why. For three hundred years they’ve been this way, caring far more for their own goals than for anyone who would dare try to stop them.

“All right, we can keep being stubborn,” he allows. “But we have to stand _together_ , especially when it comes to taking care of each other. That’s—that’s what’s more important to me than anything else.”

“Mm… yes.”

There’s ambivalence in her voice.

“Monica…”

“It’s a nice idea, certainly,” she says. “I don’t disagree, but… I hope that doesn’t mean we’re backing down from SAMPLE, because I have quite the treasure trove of information on—”

“I don’t care right now,” Huey says. “Not right this second. Right now, could you just… stop handling his memories and come home?” He fiddles with the duvet again. It doesn’t keep his voice from wavering. “I want to hold you.”

“Oh…” Monica says, and then he hears her sniffle. “I want that too… H-Huey…”

She begins to cry, earnest and overwhelmed, and he stays on the phone with her until she’s ready for the drive home.

*

In the end, going after SAMPLE doesn’t look anything like Monica and Huey thought it would.

There’s no glamorous spy work, no stealthy pursuit of the ringleaders to back them into a corner. No breaking into locked buildings in the dead of night, masks on their faces and knives in their hands. No opportunity for the Mask Maker’s urban legend to spread among the cult until paranoia makes them trip up and reveal their hand.

“Did you guys really think it would play out like that?” Elmer asks at one point, nose wrinkled in skeptical amusement. They hadn’t _really_ , but they had had certain images in mind, even after the FBI started eating up all their time. Images of striking terror into the hearts of these monsters. Images of being a solitary, united force against them.

Instead, it’s mostly… paperwork.

Every morning, Monica sits down with documents recovered from Lebreau’s home, and from the other places he’s kept his papers—she knows them all—and translating them from his own personal shorthand into information that anyone can use. Huey and Sullivan then feed this into the FBI database on the subject, and from there, it seems, it makes its way to other law enforcement agencies across the world. Lebreau maintained contact with every branch of SAMPLE, and though he didn’t always take physical notes, his memories lay everything bare. It takes Monica only a few days to draw up a worldwide map of their locations.

But Huey doesn’t let her do this for more than a few hours a day. He insists that she takes breaks—that she has time to be _herself_ rather than miring herself in the memories she absorbed. “I’m fine,” she says the first few times he comes to draw her away with his hand on her shoulder. “It’s like watching a movie. It’s not going to change me, I promise.”

And it’s true, essentially. Lebreau is too foreign to ever mistake his memories for her own. The visceral, glittering connections he fostered with others and then fed on like a leech might have been a curiosity to her had they not been tainted so thoroughly by unabashed sadism; but as it is, she stays disengaged, imagining herself a pair of thick, hygienic gloves as she pushes through them.

Still, Huey is persistent. “It’s an awful movie,” he points out, wearing his beautiful sarcastic smile. He isn’t wrong, and he follows it up with a perfect trump card: “Besides, I want to spend time with you.”

She sighs, sending him a look that is baleful and bashful all at once. “You know I can’t say no to that,” she complains, and kisses his fingers and shuts down the computer.

Elmer doesn’t get involved in the hunt. He doesn’t ask them to stop anymore, either—apparently he trusts the FBI’s methods more than he trusts what they would have come up with on their own. Which, they have to admit to each other, is perfectly fair. So he just stays out of it. He spends most of his time with Ellis—teaching her to read, and distracting her from needing to know what Monica and Huey and Sullivan are talking about together.

He’s mostly back to normal. He laughs off any suggestion that spending time with the cult may have reawakened old trauma, and Monica and Huey don’t push him to acknowledge it even though they’re certain it has. He’s jumpier than usual. He’s always been hyper-aware of touch, but now he flinches if it comes unexpectedly. He dodges any question about his time with the cult by talking about Ellis instead, and Monica doesn’t think he’s even aware of doing so. Still, his smile is what it usually is—a little too peppy, a little out-of-place, but always energetic. He _means_ it, in the way that Elmer has always meant it. When he watches Ellis grow more and more comfortable in their little family, his smile is something even more than that.

Ellis hasn’t smiled yet. But she knows she likes eating sweet foods and touching soft things; she knows that she trusts Elmer, Zoismos, Monica, and Huey, in approximately that order. She believes that Sullivan won’t hurt her. She hasn’t smiled yet, no, but every day Elmer says “Soon!” with a sparkle in his eye.

She never asks about her family.

 

Elmer asks Monica, though.

“You haven’t told them about the Martins,” he observes one evening after Ellis is in bed.

She averts her eyes slightly, a wry smile tugging at her lips. Huey only raises an eyebrow.

Elmer tilts his head. “You’ve been avoiding it on purpose?”

She has. “I want you and Ellis to decide what will happen to them,” she says, and it’s almost the truth. In truth, what she wants is a little more vengeful than that: they hurt Elmer and Ellis specifically, so she wants them to meet with a specific fate. She wants their punishment to be consciously decided upon, and not by the law enforcement agencies of the world.

But Elmer hesitates. “Should I ask Ellis about it, d’you think?”

“I wouldn’t,” Huey mutters.

“Hmm… yeah, I don’t really think she wants to think about them at all,” Elmer says. “She’s still scared of them. I don’t think she loves them.”

“I can hardly blame her for that,” Huey says sharply.

“No, I don’t blame her. It’s just… different from me, you know? I mean with my parents. I don’t know if I ever loved them, but… I don’t think I was afraid of them. They just _were_.”

“And what about with her parents?” Monica presses, watching him.

“Was I afraid of them? No, I just…”

But he trails off, his ever-present smile taking on a strange quality as he contemplates the question and then threatening to sink away entirely.

Huey reaches for him. “Elmer,” he says, a forewarning before he settles his arm around Elmer’s shoulders, and Elmer exhales and leans into the embrace.

Monica’s heart swells as she watches wordless comfort pass between the two of them, and a faint smile comes to her lips. Then she is solemn again.

“It’s up to you, then, Elmer,” she says. “I think I have about a week more’s worth of information, but I don’t want to exclude them unless we have a plan. Let me know soon?”

Elmer nods, slowly. “I’ll think about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huey's reference to Fermet "tr[ying] to kill [Monica] before" has nothing to do with her actual fate in canon, by the way; things didn't play out like that. Instead, it refers to the AU version of the fishing scene... which unfortunately only exists in my mind. In short, after doing his whole gloating thing, Fermet tried to eat Monica--only to discover that she (and Huey, at Huey's suggestion) hadn't drunk their liquor of immortality yet. She stabs him for the attempt. Then Elmer freaks him out as in canon.  
> Unfortunately the scene isn't distinct enough from canon to be worth writing out at length.


	9. Chapter 8

**Two weeks later**

Someone pounds on the front door.

“Open up! Hey!”

The someone is, of course, Victor Talbot. Huey sends a glare towards the entryway from his spot at the dining room table. “There’s a _doorbell_ ,” he observes to no one in particular, nettled.

“It’s hardly been a week,” Monica agrees. “Whatever it is, you’d think it could wait until we’ve settled back in.”

Thanks to Monica’s information, SAMPLE has been wiped out in a series of simultaneous raids across the world. So Huey, Monica, and Elmer have returned home with Ellis in tow. It’s taken some adjustment. The FBI paid for the cleaning of the living room, and it _looks_ spotless, but Ellis still regards the room with some wariness. If it continues to make her uncomfortable—which seems likely—they’ll probably move to somewhere with one more bedroom rather than converting the study. So they haven’t put a lot of effort into settling back in.

“Come _on_ , you assholes, I know you’re in there!”

Sitting at the end of the table, next to Elmer, Ellis squeezes her eyes shuts and presses her hands over her ears. Elmer notices her distress and touches her shoulder gently.

“Hey, Ellis, it’s okay. That’s just a friend of Agent Sullivan, nothing to worry about. He’s nice.”

Huey sends a dubious look Elmer’s way, but doesn’t correct his assessment of Victor. Monica stands.

“I’ll go shut him up,” she volunteers.

But Elmer holds up a hand for her to wait. “Actually… you wanna take Ellis upstairs and sit with her for a bit? I can handle this.”

She contemplates him for a long moment. “Are you sure?”

“Yep, I’ve got it.”

Monica exchanges a look with Huey before Victor pounds on the door again. “Coming!” she calls, aggravated, and then sighs in acquiescence. “Ellis? Want to find Zoe and go upstairs?”

Ellis opens her eyes carefully and looks at Elmer in concern. “Are you gonna be okay?” she mumbles.

“Yup!” Elmer sends her a confident grin. “Victor’s not scary, he’s just really loud. And bitter. Like grinding coffee beans in the morning!”

The comparison goes over Ellis’s head, but her concern seems to lessen. She reaches for Monica’s hand and they head upstairs together.

Elmer sends a look at Huey. “You wanna go with them?”

“No, whatever he wants, he probably thinks I’m to blame anyway,” Huey points out. “I’ll let him in.”

And so, a few minutes later, Victor is sitting at the dining room table. He’s got a complicated look on his face.

“How’s the girl doing?” is the first question he asks.

Elmer answers with a grin. “She’s pretty good. I’m still working on getting her to smile, but I think she’s doing well.”

“You should get her therapy. I’ve been looking up some good ones for the rest of the recovered kids, I can give you some names if you want.”

Elmer scratches his chin. “Well… She has trouble talking sometimes, especially with new people. I dunno if therapy’ll work for her.”

“Then find an art therapist or something. Believe me, every one of these kids needs as much help as they can get. God, I’ve been losing sleep just _thinking_ about what they’ve been through.”

Victor runs one hand over his hair distractedly. With one eyebrow quirked, Huey speaks up.

“Elmer never had therapy, and just look how he turned out.”

“…Uh…”

Victor doesn’t realize, until Elmer cackles and slugs Huey in the arm, that it’s a joke. Then he grits his teeth, clears his throat, and opens his briefcase to pull out the thin file folder he’s brought along. He sets a photograph onto the table: a man with a peaceful smile and pale blond hair that’s beginning to thin at the crown. Under a white doctor’s coat, he wears a button-up shirt of mottled red and black.

The smirk slips off Elmer’s face as he looks at the photograph. Then, looking at Victor, he pulls a crooked smile back into place. “Can you put that away?” he asks. “In case Ellis comes back downstairs, I mean.”

Victor obliges. “It’s her father, right?”

“Yep, that’s him.”

“Or more specifically, it _was_ her father.”

Victor’s gaze shifts to Huey there, dark and accusatory. Huey only raises an eyebrow in response.

“One of the SAMPLE members we’ve arrested said her husband hadn’t rejoined the main cult from a failing splinter branch. When we went to the house she pointed us to, we found what was left of this guy. Dr. Lawrence Martin, pediatrician at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.” He sneers at Huey. “Finally found a use for those explosives of yours, didn’t you?”

“Are you suggesting it was a poor use for them?” Huey asks evenly.

“I’m suggesting that it was _murder_ , you little shit.”

“Justifiable homicide.” Huey crosses his arms. “Killing any one of those child-torturing bastards is obviously justified to prevent the harm of innocents.”

Elmer furrows his brow. “Hang on—”

“—You can’t find a more textbook case than that,” Huey continues, speaking calmly over Elmer’s interruption.

But Elmer speaks up again. “Hey. Hey, Huey, I’m not letting you take the fall for this. Victor, I’m the one who went after Dr. Martin.”

Victor and Huey both look at him—Victor more incredulously. “You? Mr. Smiles-and-butterflies? You, who once asked me whether a serial killer it took the FBI ten goddamn years to track down was happy in prison? You’re telling me _you_ blew this guy up?”

Elmer shrugs. “Well, it makes more sense than Huey going. I actually knew him, I lived with him for two months. I told Agent Sullivan that, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, it would make perfect sense for _anyone else_ to want revenge after something like that. Like Huey here, I bet he’d love to get revenge for it. But I’m saying it sounds pretty damn out of character for you.”

“I didn’t go for revenge.” Elmer makes a face too complicated to be a smile. “I went to talk to him.”

“To talk.” Victor snorts. “You want me to believe you brought a bomb to go _talk_ to this guy?”

“I brought the bomb,” Huey says.

“Huey—”

“I went with Elmer when he went to talk to Martin,” Huey insists. “He thought he could get away with just talking. I didn’t believe him.”

“Huey, c’mon,” Elmer breaks in. “You don’t have to be part of this.”

Huey glances at him only briefly before turning back to Victor. “And I was right. That bastard’s been looking for a new victim ever since Elmer left with Ellis, and when Elmer came back thinking he could talk him out of his child-torturing ways, he tried to turn on Elmer instead.” He bares his teeth in a grimace. “I didn’t like that.”

Victor narrows his eyes. “So it _was_ revenge?”

“Justifiable homicide,” Huey repeats. “He threatened Elmer. After amply demonstrating willingness to carry out such threats.”

“That’s not what _happened_ ,” Elmer insists, crossing his arms.

“Yes, it is.”

“Huey—”

Victor clears his throat. “You two want a minute to get your stories straight?” he asks sarcastically. A vein in his temple has begun to throb. “Here’s a little tip from an expert who’s been doing this for a while, it’s a lot easier if you _tell me the damn truth_.”

“I _am_ telling the truth,” Huey says. “Elmer asked me to come along. He wanted a second opinion on whether there was anything in Ellis’s father that could be saved. He didn’t know I brought the bomb along. I judged there was nothing in him that could be saved, given that he still insisted that he needed to torture children to be happy. And then it occurred to him that he could torture Elmer instead, and I lost my temper.”

“You always blow shit up when you lose your temper?”

Huey shrugs. “I have an affinity for fire and explosives,” he confesses offhandedly. “I think it stems from watching my entire village burned at the stake by a roving band of witch-hunters when I was ten years old.”

Victor flinches at that. “You—did I ask?! Don’t change the subject!”

“You wanted an explanation. I’ve provided one, to the best of my ability. You have to admit, it makes a lot more sense than Elmer going berserk with a bomb.” Huey snorts, but then he turns serious eyes towards Elmer. “Besides, Elmer has been focused on taking care of Ellis. He would never do something that would get him arrested and thus endanger his ability to look after her.”

Elmer, who’d opened his mouth to object, closes his mouth again. There’s uncertainty in his eyes, but he doesn’t speak.

Huey looks back at Victor. “Now all that’s left for you is to decide whether it was justifiable homicide or whether you intend to charge me with a crime.”

Victor growls in the back of his throat, crossing his arms across his chest. “He threatened Elmer?”

“After establishing that he fully intended to keep torturing people, yes.”

“You know, this kind of thing still goes to trial,” Victor tells him. “With a judge and a jury and lawyers who know _exactly_ what the words ‘justifiable homicide’ mean instead of just looking them up on the internet.”

“You’re going to arrest me, then?” Huey asks. But then, as Victor grinds his teeth, he reconsiders his guess. “No… you haven’t even brought a warrant, have you?” He looks down at the folder on the table, suddenly suspicious of its thinness. “Why are you here, Victor?”

Victor looks between the two of them, jaw set in a grimace. Finally he shovels the file off the table and back into his briefcase. “I came to ask you,” he says through gritted teeth, “whether you knew anything about the _gas leak_ that led to the explosion in this man’s basement.”

Huey and Elmer raise their eyebrows in sync. “Are you covering this up, Victor?” Huey asks.

Victor splutters. “Well don’t fucking _say it_!” He snaps his briefcase shut. “Jesus christ and you’re supposed to be a genius. Listen, Huey Laforet, I came here to do one of two things. Either I was gonna ask you about this ‘gas leak’ or I was gonna explain to you just why we don’t fucking allow vigilante justice in this country! And since you’re gonna be a little rat about it, guess what! You get the lecture!”

“Ah,” Huey says dismissively as Victor draws a breath. It deflates his momentum a bit and gives Elmer a chance to break in.

“I guess that’s fair,” he says with a snicker. “Just don’t be too loud, okay? Ellis isn’t used to shouting, so it freaks her out.”

Victor snarls. “Fine. Then I’ll say this all _calmly_.”

 

“Calmly” would be overstating it, but Victor does manage to somewhat keep his voice down over the next thirty minutes as he berates Huey. When he finally runs out of steam, it’s Elmer who thanks him.

“That was really informative! I didn’t know the idea of vigilante justice was connected to hunts for runaway slaves. That’s no good.”

Before Victor can round on Elmer with a follow-up lecture, Huey stands. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Victor,” he says, a very clear indication that the FBI agent should leave.

Victor considers the two of them for a moment, then sighs. “Yeah. Fine.” He stands. “Give my regards to Monica.”

“Sure!”

Huey shows him to the door. Just before he steps over the threshold, Huey opens his mouth.

“Thank you,” he says. “For understanding.”

Victor scoffs. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t get used to it, all right? Under any other circumstances I’d love to land your meddling ass in court. I’d make sure the smartest damn prosecutor in the country was put on your case just to make you squirm, and I’d love _every_ second of it. …But I’m not enough of a heartless bastard to pretend these are normal circumstances.”

“Indeed.” A wry smile briefly touches Huey’s lips. “Until next time, Agent Talbot.”

“Keep your damn nose clean and there won’t be a next time, Huey Laforet.”

With that warning—certain to go unheeded—he departs. Huey returns to the kitchen, where Elmer shoots him a baleful, hesitant look. Huey sighs.

“I suppose this is what I get for not keeping my explosives under lock and key,” he says, patient aggravation in his voice.

“Sorry,” Elmer answers with a nervous grin.

“Are you?”

The grin fades, and Elmer thinks for a moment. “I dunno,” he confesses.

With another sigh, Huey sits back down. “Maybe I’m the idiot here,” he muses with a roll of his eyes. “When you told us you were going to Maryland to take care of Ellis’s family, maybe I _should’ve_ realized I’d wind up _covering up a murder you committed_.”

“You didn’t have to cover up anything,” Elmer protests. “And besides, I thought you said it was justifiable homicide.”

That gives Huey pause, and he frowns. “Did he actually threaten you?”

“Yeah, kinda. And he was definitely gonna try to revive SAMPLE. You were spot-on, actually.”

“What happened?”

Elmer sighs, and he begins to explain.

*

**A few days ago**

They never bothered to change the locks.

Elmer still has the key they gave him, by accident rather than by deliberate design, and when he discovers that it still works, he isn’t surprised. After all, there’s no reason for them to mind his coming back. Especially if he were to bring Ellis with him.

He hasn’t done _that_ , of course. He’s come alone.

The house is eerily silent as Elmer steps inside. There had been a sense of life before, an energy that was tense and numbed all at once, and that is missing now. Elmer almost wonders whether the house has been abandoned entirely, the cult members moving on to some new haunt before the feds could track them down—

But a light peeks out from under the basement door.

Elmer sighs, opens the door, and descends the stairs.

What he finds at the bottom is not the crowded, eager solemnity of their rituals. There is no agonized screaming, no joyous praying. Dr. Lawrence Martin stands, alone, at the altar in the front, preparing a syringe for his own arm. Elmer scuffs his feet deliberately as he approaches, and Martin startles. He looks up with wide eyes; that’s hope, Elmer identifies. But as soon as he classifies it, it vanishes, replaced by something too complex for Elmer to read but too sorrowful for him to appreciate. With a sigh, Martin turns back to his task, sliding the syringe into the vein at the crook of his elbow and shooting up.

“Your holiness,” he says, his eyes cast down. “You betrayed us.”

“You did say I could take Ellis with her if I could get her to come.”

Martin shakes his head. “That’s not her name anymore.”

“Yeah, it is,” Elmer answers, quietly defiant.

Martin does not argue the point. Nor does he argue, as Elmer thought he might, that he never believed that Ellis would actually dare to take Elmer’s offer. Instead he raises his head and spreads his arms, indicating the empty sanctuary.

“Does this please you, your wretchedness?” he asks, and Elmer wonders if he was wrong about the hope on his face before. “That we—that I am alone, reduced to this?”

“You’re not happy,” Elmer observes, and he isn’t sure how he feels about the observation.

Martin gives a laugh infused with sadness. “Of course I am not happy. I have no one to receive my prayers, so they are powerless and empty. My colleagues, even my wife, have left me to return to one of the larger groups and worship their myriad gods.”

Elmer thinks of the woman he met at the funeral and the gentle look of peace on her face. He thinks about the coordinated raid conducted on SAMPLE headquarters across the globe last week, and he wonders if Martin knows.

He does. “They are gone now, and no doubt someone will soon come for me as well. Is this what you hoped for?” He narrows his eyes, considering Elmer. “Did you do this?”

Elmer wonders how honest to be, then decides it doesn’t really matter. “My friends went after you guys,” he says. “They had a lot to do with it. I wasn’t really involved.”

“But surely you must take some pleasure in it. It’s only natural.”

Elmer shrugs. “I wish you guys could’ve found your happiness without stealing it from others,” he says. “I do want you to be happy. I want that for everyone.”

It’s the one conclusion he can’t quite deny, the habit he can’t quite break. It’s part of what makes him himself, for better or worse.

Martin stares at him for a moment; then he laughs, throwing his head back, and this time it’s edged with ecstasy rather than grief. Elmer can see the effects of the drug stealing over his posture.

“Merciful one!” Martin exclaims. “Truly you must have once housed god within you, for who else could be so generous? Who else could fail to take a bitter pleasure in another’s suffering? This in itself is evidence that the faith will persist. Yes… yes, this is nothing but a setback. Our holy book tells us that we have been driven to the brink of extinction before, but our ideas always rise again. I could revive them. I could become the true leader of our faith, and no one would desert me then.”

There is a manic light to his eyes as he regards Elmer.

“After all, there is a way,” he says. “A way for us to worship without ever laying our hands on another child. For the rest of eternity. Isn’t there, your wretched holiness?”

“You mean me,” Elmer says shrewdly. He fiddles with the object in his pocket as Martin descends the four steps that set the altar apart. There is an incredible joy in the cultist’s face.

“Yes, your holiness. You, with a body that can endure anything—the ravages of cruelty and of time itself.” The look in his eyes softens to something like adoration. “From the first moment I met you, the figure long spoken of in our scriptures, I longed to bring god to life in that fantastical body of yours. I longed to worship you.”

A wry smile comes to Elmer’s face despite the distant pounding of his heart. He stands very still. “Yeah,” he says, “I wondered if you had that in mind the whole time. I pretended not to, ’cause my friends would never forgive me for staying near someone who wanted to harm me, but… I think I did know. I think that’s part of why I felt so weird while I was here.”

( _“Being with them hurt you,”_ Huey keeps telling him, complicated emotions behind his pained smile, and Elmer’s finally starting to understand what he means by that.)

“Honestly, the thought’s crossed my mind, too,” he admits, his smile crooked. “Because you’re right, it would be really… tidy. It would tie up a lot of loose ends at once. All I’d have to do is go back to being the thing I was born to be, and I could still make people smile like I love to. Here’s the thing, though,” he says, his smile swelling a bit fuller. “I can’t do that. Because I have some really good friends who care about me, whose hearts would break if I subjected myself to that. Their smiles would never recover. And that’s… really nice. To have people who care about _my_ smiles like that. I really like it.”

Martin stops advancing. If he’s disappointed, it doesn’t show on his face.

Elmer continues. “It took me a really long time to get used to that, though. To even figure out that it was happening. Longer than a natural lifespan, I think. Forget ten—even if I’d died when I was seventy or eighty or something, I never would have understood what it’s like to be cared about by someone and care about them in return.” He cocks his head. “Hey, does that make you happy? That I stayed broken even after the church freed me?”

Martin raises his hands in prayer. “It does. How wonderful that you kept suffering, wretched one.”

“I thought so.” Elmer gives a bit of a chuckle. “See, my friends would be really angry if they heard you say that. I don’t think I am, though. I mean, that’s just what makes sense to you. If my parents magically came back to life and appeared here, I bet they’d say the same thing. And I don’t know. I try not to judge, for the most part. That’s what I’ve been doing for three hundred years, doing my best to make people smile without judging them. Even when that makes me the bad guy.”

He fiddles with the object in his pocket again. It’s nice to articulate these things to someone without it stealing their smile away. It really is. He takes a few steps towards Martin and leans on the armrest at the end of one of the pews.

“Honestly, things have been a little weird since I ran into you guys,” he confesses. “I’ve been really tempted to prioritize. I’ve been caring more about Ellis’s smile, and Huey’s and Monica’s, than all of yours. Sometimes I even caught myself thinking that everyone in the world deserved happiness more than you guys. And that’s just not like me. But…” He looks closely at Martin. The peace on his face—he’s pretty sure it’s genuine. “You’re happier now than you were a few minutes ago, right?”

Martin’s smile relaxes. “Yes. Thanks to our medicine, I am at peace.”

“Even though your family’s gone and your faith is being torn apart?”

“I can rebuild. The despair I felt a moment ago was a hallucination born of withdrawal; my fear was only because I had forgotten this feeling. I do not need to fear suffering or hardship. I will find a new god incarnate and rediscover SAMPLE from the ground up.” He lowers his gaze, almost bashful in his eagerness. “All will look to me for guidance and salvation, just as I’ve always hoped for.”

Elmer peers into his face. He must mean what he says; there’s nothing to suggest that the smile there is anything less than 100% genuine.

It’s satisfying, but somehow, it makes Elmer sad, too.

“I see,” he says, and he does. “Well, in that case, there’s just one thing I should really do for you.”

Martin tilts his head invitingly. “What’s that?”

Elmer drinks in his smile, and with a wistful smile of his own, he answers:

“Grant you a peaceful death.”

He presses the switch to activate the bomb strapped under his jacket.

Light and sound and a surprisingly brief flash of pain—

And then blackness.

 

He comes to before his body has finished regenerating; his skin screams where it is burnt and his vision is blurry like there’s something wrong with his eyeballs. He stays where he is—laid out across one of the pews, he thinks—and watches the ceiling come into focus while he heals. There is no sound except the quiet _schlip, schlip_ of his body creeping back to him and the occasional creak of splintered wood.

When the pain recedes, he sits up and looks around for Martin. He finds him—or more accurately, his corpse—laid out across the altar at the front of the room, clothing and bits of skin burnt away and spine bent at an unlikely angle. Elmer approaches him.

There’s enough of his face left to tell: he’s still smiling.

Elmer’s not, not quite. After weighing the option for days, he only succeeded in convincing himself that this solution was _necessary_ and _tidy_. He thinks of the rest of the cult, captured by law enforcement and weaned off the drug that keeps them happy, panic sinking in as they realize the punishment that is coming for them. It will be a long time before they learn to feel happiness on their own. This is almost a mercy by comparison.

Whether Martin deserved such a mercy, Elmer doesn’t know, but whether someone deserves joy isn’t his concern. He decided a long time ago that that wasn’t what he cared about. The fact is, he ended Lawrence Martin while he was in the grips of the peace that the cult so desperately craved.

And now, Ellis is safe. That’s probably what matters most of all.

He’d better get going. The basement is—was—essentially soundproofed, but the explosion was probably beyond its capabilities to muffle, and the neighbors will be curious. So Elmer leaves Martin behind and climbs up the stairs. He checks the guest room and finds that the suitcase he left behind is still there. He shrugs and changes into fresh clothes; then he heads outside to drive home.

*

Monica and Ellis come downstairs just as Elmer’s finishing his story to find Huey rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“That’s premeditation,” he says, quietly exasperated. “Just for the record.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess it is!” Elmer laughs. “Good thing you came up with a different story, then.”

Huey sighs. Monica looks between the two of them as Ellis slides back into her chair. “I see neither of you have been arrested,” she remarks.

“Despite Elmer’s best efforts,” Huey says. At the same time, Elmer says, “All thanks to Huey!”

Monica snorts and then shakes her head. “I love you two,” she says, matter-of-factly. “You’re both ridiculous.”

“I’m not as ridiculous as Elmer is,” Huey protests.

“You are,” Monica answers with a smirk.

Elmer’s attention has already turned from the flirting couple to Ellis as she tugs on his sleeve. He leans close so that she doesn’t have to push herself to speak loudly.

“You’re okay?” she whispers, searching his face.

He answers with a bright smile. “Yep, I’m fine! The loud guy just wanted to ask us a few questions, so we answered them and then he went away. He asked how you were doing, too! He thinks you should try drawing pictures to feel better.”

“Drawing… pictures?”

“Like this!”

Elmer dips his finger into the barbecue sauce on his plate and then doodles a little smiley face on the table between himself and Ellis.

“You could draw whatever’s on your mind. It’s fun. I’m not very good at it, though, so I stick to smiley faces. Plus I like ’em, but you know that.”

Ellis nods, her eyes turned towards the table. She leans on him. “Elmer, what’s arrested? Like Monica said?”

“Ahh, don’t worry about that. She was just joking.”

“Isn’t arrested what happened to everyone?”

Elmer hesitates, and Huey and Monica fall awkwardly silent as well, looking at Ellis. There is worry on her young face, but clarity, too. She may be quiet and naïve, but they should’ve known by now that she’s observant.

There’s no use in lying to her about this. “Yeah,” Elmer says. “All the SAMPLE members have been arrested. That means they were taken away and put somewhere where they can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

“Was that—was—”

Distress makes it difficult for her to speak. Her brow furrows in frustration as she opens and closes her mouth. Monica and Huey glance at each other, not sure what she’s trying to say.

But Elmer gives a guess. “Was that what was going to happen to me and Huey?”

She gives a fearful nod.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Huey made sure that’s not gonna happen. He’s smart like that.”

Ellis’s eyes dart over to Huey, who does his best to give her a reassuring smile. Then she looks back at Elmer.

“I don’t w-want you to… go away,” she says in a choked voice. “I l-ll-like being… with you. All of you. I think… this feeling… is liking.”

“Yeah?” Elmer feels the smile on his face grow fuller. Something swells in his chest, warm and light. He doesn’t name the feeling, for fear of driving it away, but he’s pretty sure he knows what it is. “Well, don’t worry, Ellis. We’re all going to be together for a long time.”


	10. Epilogue

**Christmas morning**

Ellis wakes up in tears, coiled into a tight ball as though that will protect her. It takes agonizing minutes for her to realize that her eyes and ears are uncovered, that the pains in her body are mostly phantom ones, fading away with her dream. She unfolds her limbs, and they ache, but only dully. She dares to open her eyes, and she’s still safe, in her new home. Still safe in this impossibly soft bed.

It was Elmer’s before he brought her here, and it’s way too big for her. It’s just about the right size for her and Zoe together, though, and once again he’s slipped into the room in the middle of the night to sleep at the foot of the bed. Her waking must have woken him, too; he watches her with eyes that gleam in the darkness. When she reaches for him, he lets out a complaining meow but lets her snuggle him into her arms. His warmth is reassuring.

But not reassuring enough, tonight.

She slides out of bed, still holding Zoe in her arms, and pads out into the hallway and down the stairs. She manages this without turning on the lights. When she turns on the lights, it wakes up Monica and Huey across the hall, and they try to help. Ellis doesn’t want that right now. They’re nice, but they’re not quite right. After a nightmare like the one she’s just had, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to talk to them. Elmer’s much better at figuring out what she’s trying to say.

So she creeps through the living room, past the glowing tree Elmer set up a few days ago, past the door those people had broken through when they tried to take her back. Over to what was a study and is now Elmer’s bedroom. And finally, she turns on a light.

“Bwhuh?”

Elmer rolls over in bed, only half-woken by the light. But when he sees Ellis standing by the door, he blinks a few times and scrubs his eye with a knuckle. “Ellis? You up early because it’s Christmas?”

Ellis hesitates, then shakes her head.

“Hmmm. Nightmare, then?”

She nods to that, ducking her face into Zoe’s fur. “About… my brother,” she mumbles.

Elmer’s smile turn soft and sympathetic as he sits up on his air mattress. “Yeah? D’you want to talk about it?”

But even the suggestion brings the dream to her mind again, despair on her brother’s face and permanent unbreakable smiles on everyone else’s. The old scar on her forehead throbs. She shakes her head no.

“Fair enough.” Elmer stands and sends her a grin. “Let’s just do happy things, then! You don’t know what happens on Christmas, right?”

“Right…”

“Well! First you get a stocking!”

He leads the way back out to the living room and goes to the fireplace. Hanging over it, there are four oddly-shaped bags bulging with stuff. Ellis had missed them in the half-light from the tree earlier. They aren’t usually there.

“Here!” Elmer takes the bag closest to the window off its hook and offers it to her. “This is your stocking. Everything in here is for you.”

Ellis puts Zoe down so that she can accept the stocking and looks at it uncertainly. Then she looks back at the ones still hanging up.

“Is that one yours?” she asks, pointing to the next one over. It’s decorated with a pattern of yellow smiley faces. Elmer’s favorite.

“Sure is!” Elmer whisks that one of the hook as well and then takes a seat on the ground. “C’mon, let’s see what we got.”

And, without any hesitation, he overturns his stocking and lets everything in it tumble out. Candy and countless little trinkets spill to the floor.

Ellis sits and follows his lead, dumping out her stocking a bit more carefully. It’s filled with tiny chocolates, colored pencils, butterfly clips, and things that look like little toys of some kind. She picks one up. It’s a plastic casing shaped like a ball with a little bell inside.

“Those are for Zoe to play with with you,” Elmer explains, nudging her arm. “They were Huey’s idea.”

And indeed, Zoe chooses that moment to dart forward and pounce on another one of the toys, a soft plush thing shaped like a mouse. Elmer reaches over and begins to sort Ellis’s stuff into separate piles as Ellis watches Zoe play. Then she hears a crinkling sound, and she turns towards Elmer in surprise to see that he’s unwrapping one of the chocolates.

“Catch!” he says, and tosses the unwrapped candy her way.

Ellis catches it, her brow contracting. “We’re not s’posed to have candy for breakfast…” she reminds him. They’ve been trying to teach her about _healthy_ food instead of just wondering whether she has enough. She’s trying to learn, because it seems important to them.

But Elmer waves her concern away. “It’s Christmas, everything’s different today!” he says. “That’s what’s so much fun about holidays. You get to have fun doing stuff you don’t usually do. Just try to pay attention to your tummy and stop if you start feeling bad.”

He grins encouragingly, so Ellis puts the chocolate in her mouth before it can melt onto her hands. She likes it.

Still, she tries not to eat too quickly. In between candy bars, she tosses the cat toys in Zoe’s direction. He chases every single one, wriggling and getting up onto his hind legs as if they’re living beings fighting against him. Elmer smiles as he watches, and he, too, begins to eat his candy.

The air changes when she opens a packet of small, circular candies. For a moment, she doesn’t understand why she suddenly feels so sad; then she remembers.

“Oh…” she says. “These are… M&Ms?”

“Yep.” Elmer’s joy softens, too, as if he senses her sadness. “You should be able to taste them now. But if you don’t wanna try, we can just throw them out.”

She hesitates, then shakes her head. “I’ll try them,” she says, and picks out one of the candies that she’d tipped into her hand. When she bites down, the familiar, sweet taste of chocolate floods her mouth. But with the texture—the thin crunch between her back teeth—comes a memory of a burned tongue and throat. She has to fight not to gag. She swallows, trying to remember that it doesn’t hurt to do so, that her throat isn’t hurt right now. She knows that. But she can’t make herself eat another one.

“No good?” Elmer asks gently. “My bad. I can throw ’em away.”

She hands him the little bag, and he stands up to toss it in the nearest garbage can. By the time he returns, Ellis has curled her knees up to her chest. She watches Zoe pounce on his new toys and tries to remember why that’s _fun_ , but she feels disconnected. Her dream creeps back into the forefront of her mind. She buries her head in her knees, trying to forget it. Trying not to believe it.

Elmer sits back down next to her and puts a careful arm around her shoulder.

“Sorry, Ellis. You okay?”

She shrugs, then shakes her head. “Feel bad. I don’t want… don’t wanna feel like this.”

“Yeah, I get it. Are you scared?”

“Sad.” She raises her head a little to look at him. “Can I—can I tt-tell you about my dream?”

“Of course,” Elmer says, and he vanishes the smile from his face in preparation to hear her story.

She tucks her head back down into her knees. “I t-told you about my brother, right? How he…” She touches the scar on her temple, where he once bashed her head against the corner of a bedframe before they killed him.

“Yeah, I remember,” Elmer says so that she doesn’t have to finish the sentence. “Is that what your dream was about?”

“No,” Ellis mumbles, “not… quite. It was… In the dream, he was pulling me up to the front of that room and everyone was smiling and they started praying on me, but—that’s not… It’s not…”

Elmer’s hand rubs her back gently as she tries to make the words. She remembers sadness on her brother’s face, different from the agony he was always in. She remembers how he hugged her first.

 “That’s not what happened,” she whispers. “He was t—trying to save me. From everybody. From what they were doing to him.”

Elmer’s hand stills on her back. “By killing you,” he says quietly, sadly.

“Uh-huh.”

“I see.” Elmer sighs and leans back until he’s lying down, facing the ceiling. When Ellis looks at him, he kind of smiles, but only kind of. “Your dad had it all wrong, you know that? He thought your brother was choosing you to be next. But I bet you’re right. I bet your brother was trying to do what he could.”

“Yeah,” Ellis whispers.

“You were four when they killed him, right?”

Ellis nods. She remembers watching his face go quiet; she has nightmares about that, too. Even while she’s spent years waiting for that peace herself, she’s had nightmares about it.

Elmer watches her, and then he sighs. “Y’know what Huey always says?”

“Um…” The sudden change of subject leaves Ellis confused, but she tries to remember. “Smile Junkie?”

“Ha!” Elmer snickers a little. “Yeah, he says that about me a lot, doesn’t he? That’s not what I mean, though. This might be something he’s never said to you before. I’m sure he thinks it, though.”

He lifts his hand so he can look at it. The sleeve of his pajama shirt falls back from his wrist a little, revealing a forearm that is as scarred as Ellis’s.

“He always says, ‘That shouldn’t have happened to you.’ Whenever I say something about my family, even if I’m just trying to tell a story, he says it every time. I never really understood why, ’cause I don’t really think there’s anything controlling whether something _should_ happen or not? Things just… happen. What happened to me happened. Huey’s angry about it now, and Monica too, but that doesn’t change it.” He lowers his hand. “But I think I get it now. ’Cause I look at you, and I hear that story about your brother, and I think, I wish that hadn’t happened. To either of you. I wish you’d gotten to be normal kids. I think that would’ve been more… more fair. More right. And I know I’d do just about anything to make sure you don’t get hurt again. And I feel like that’s a selfish desire, but also not. You know?”

Ellis nods silently.

Elmer chuckles, but his smile isn’t right. It looks like it did the night he took her away from her family. “Don’t nod so readily, kiddo,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “I, um… I need to tell you something.”

Ellis watches the sudden strangeness in his bearing, her heart thumping. “Okay?”

His eyes dart towards hers once and then away. He fiddles with the edge of his sleeve. “I think your brother must’ve been braver than I am. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to keep that promise I made to you the night we escaped.”

“Oh,” Ellis says in a voice that barely comes out at all.

_Okay, here goes,_ he’d said, his voice shaking and desperation on his face. _I want to make a deal with you. Okay? I really want you to come with me, but I know that’s scary, so if you run away with me, I’ll make sure your life is better than it is now. And if I can’t do that, if you ever think it’s not worth it to keep living, I promise I’ll set you free myself. In the most painless way I can find, so you can smile._

“I kinda lied,” Elmer says now, and his voice is shaking again. “I mean… I didn’t mean to lie, but I kind of knew I was lying even when I said it. I don’t want to kill you. I can’t do that.”

Before Ellis knows it, before she has any idea why, there are tears dripping from her eyes. Her face scrunches up and she tries to keep from sniffling, but Elmer catches her anyway.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and there’s a quiet distress to his voice. “I didn’t want to lie to you. I keep trying to do what’s right for you, but… I really want you to be happy, more than anything else. _Really_ happy, for as long as you can, and I want to keep seeing that happiness and keep bringing it into your life, and I just—I guess maybe I’m too selfish to do it the way you want. I’m sorry, Ellis.”

“No!” Her voice, uncooperative as always, blurts out of her too loudly between her tears. “That’s not—not…”

Elmer is silent, waiting, and when Ellis curls over him to give him a hug, she can feel him gasp. She holds onto him as tightly as she can.

 “Not why I’m crying,” she says thickly. “I just… just… you were sad. You were so sad. When—and that’s why—” Her voice stops obeying her once more and she can’t explain that that’s why she never tried to laugh again after that night and that’s why she went with him, because she could see his heart breaking and it looked so unfamiliar but that was how she knew she could trust him. She hugs Elmer tightly and tries to help make him happier now. “I want to keep living,” she says in a whisper.

“O-oh…” His voice wavers. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. I w—wanna keep living here.” Even if Elmer’s wrong, even if the world beyond this house is as cruel as the one she grew up in, the home that Elmer and Monica and Huey make for her is safe and gentle and kind and she wants to keep feeling the way it makes her feel.

“Oh, Ellis…” Elmer’s arms encircle her. “Ellis, I’m so glad to hear that…”

She realizes, when he sniffles, that he’s close to crying too. She shakes her head against his chest. “Don’t cry,” she mumbles. “I didn’t m-mean to make you so sad. I’m sorry I was saying sad stuff. I’ll s-stop crying, so don’t cry, okay?”

She pulls away a little so that she can look Elmer in the face. When his gaze meets hers, she can see the tears in his eyes just as easily as she can see that he’s trying to smile. She’s feeling something enormous, something bigger than sadness or pain or maybe even happiness, too; something that’s bigger than just _her_. She feels _connected_ to Elmer in a way that makes her want to cry all over again. But before she can even begin to tell him that, they both manage to sniffle at the exact same moment, and that—

That’s _funny_.

“Heh.”

The sound escapes Ellis uncertainly, but she knows what it is. Elmer recognizes it at once, too, and the way his eyes get huge suddenly—that’s _even funnier_. It’s _wonderful_ , and it makes Ellis laugh again. And like water spilling over the rim of a cup, everything else bubbles over after it. She laughs because she’s free, because she’s safe, because she’s _happy_ here. Because Elmer wants her to smile, and because she wants to smile.

Elmer watches her with amazement, tears welling up out of his eyes, but somehow she can tell he’s not sad. He sits up to look at her, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. It seems like he’s trying to laugh.

“Oh, man—” he says in an uneven voice. “Oh, Ellis, you’re laughing—I want to celebrate with you, but I can’t— _sniff_ —I can’t seem to stop crying—This is so weird, I promise I’m happy—”

“That happens sometimes,” Monica’s voice says from over Ellis’s shoulder, and Ellis hardly jumps at all, and she turns to see Monica and Huey entering the living room. Huey has his arm around Monica’s waist, and they’re both wearing smiles. Huey’s has an edge to it, but not a mean edge, as he looks down at Elmer.

“The fact that you don’t know that is really something, considering how long you’ve been hounding people for their happiness,” he says. “But I guess that’s why we call you the Smile Junkie.”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess so.” Elmer sniffles once more and wipes his eyes, then he wraps an arm around Ellis and holds her close in a long, safe hug. “I guess I have to stop saying I don’t know this feeling, huh?”

“Are you okay with that?” Huey asks.

“I think… yeah. As long as I get to keep making people happy. People like Ellis, and you two, and everyone else.”

Huey shrugs, his smile fond. “I can’t imagine you’d ever stop.”

“Nope.” Elmer looks at Ellis, and at his friends, and he smiles the biggest smile Ellis has ever seen. She hopes her smile can be that big one day. “Yeah,” he says, “I think I’ll keep trying to spread this feeling to everyone.”

He smiles down at Ellis, tears still in the corners of his eyes, but smile bright all the same.

And Ellis smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the fic. Thank you for reading!


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